


Status Quo

by WafflesnRizzles



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Coparenting, Dom/sub Undertones, F/F, Feels, Self-Harm, Some pretty graphic sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-14
Updated: 2017-07-03
Packaged: 2018-08-08 20:09:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 41,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7771456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WafflesnRizzles/pseuds/WafflesnRizzles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A mother desperate not to lose her only son, Regina tries one last foolhardy plan to win Henry back. When that doesn't work, she tries the hard path to redemption--but the road is bumpier than either she or Emma ever expected. </p><p>Pre-curse Swan Queen.</p><p>UPDATE: I am back, posting this in its entirety and slightly editing previously posted chapters. Enjoy!!!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Desperate times call for Emma Swan

Status Quo

 

This takes place before the curse is broken.

 

“Regina! I came as soon as I could—” Emma says, panting from the hard sprint up the driveway. She feels unbelievably warm in her sweater and red leather jacket and can feel the beads of sweat forming on her forehead. All coherent thought is stopped, however, when the door opens to reveal Regina Mills clad only in a deep purple silk robe that comes to mid-thigh with something tantalizingly black and lacey underneath.

 

“So I see,” the older woman answers, her deep brown eyes flicking downwards and slowly upwards in an appraising fashion. It’s not unusual, per se, but the pink tongue that darts out to moisten two red, red lips is new. And wholly confusing to Emma’s mind (because her body, traitorous fuck that it is, knows exactly what to think).

 

“Is Henry okay?” Emma asks in a rush. Her eyes dart wildly around past Regina and her bare feet, straining to see any sign of an injured boy or some sign of a break-in or other illegal activity.

 

“Do come in,” Regina drawls, and it drips down Emma’s spine like glue right out of the bottle. Emma’s gut tells her to stay planted on the balmy porch with the two bugs vying for attention from the light overhead—

 

But instead she’s striding across the threshold while the back of her mind pings, “ _This is not a good idea. We repeat: this is not a good idea_.” Because a glass of the best apple cider she’s ever tasted sounds pretty good right now, three hours into her usually torpid night shift, and as much as she hates to admit it, there is just something about the Mayor that makes her tick.

 

For the first time in her life, Emma feels like she’s going towards something, like she’s no longer just standing still and waiting. That she’s fighting for something that could be _hers_. This woman—manipulative and twisted as she was—made that happen. Well, Regina and the kid who showed up on her doorstep on her twenty-eighth birthday, that is.

 

Once Emma is sitting comfortably on the couch with a glass of golden cider swirling in her left hand, she states, “Henry’s fine, isn’t he?” She wouldn’t be sitting down in Regina’s study if it weren’t the case. The cider is crisp and hot as it slides down her throat, and she can’t help but think that it reflects the woman who made it.

 

Well, it packs a punch, anyway. Emma can still feel the contact of the woman’s fist against her jaw. It was shocking, certainly: Emma would have never thought the calculating, composed mayor would ever resort to physical violence. It was also shocking because Emma realized it was the first time she had ever truly liked the woman. A punch like that, you don’t plan. A punch like that isn’t thought out or anticipated like a chess game. That had been pure, no-frills _Regina_ , and it was…nice for once.

 

“Henry goes to sleep at eight p.m. As it is going on eleven, he is upstairs asleep.” Regina says this as if Emma should already know it. As if she had been allowed to be present in her son’s life and experience things like bedtimes. Nighttime stories. Head kisses. The thought makes her heart ache dully, and she remembers a time when he was just another joy circumstance denied her.

 

“I would know, right?” Emma bites back sarcastically, annoyed both at Regina’s dig and at the fact that she was called here for no apparent reason. “You said it was urgent. What do you want, Regina?”

 

Regina shifts her legs, crossing them so that the robe slides up exposing the majority one delectable olive thigh. She smiles tightly, and takes a significant sip of her own cider before speaking. “I am tired of our little games together. You are now Sheriff, have an apartment and a…roommate.” Emma notes the utter distaste that Regina doesn’t bother to hide when referring to her roommate, Mary Margaret. She’s never quite understood why the mayor hates the sweet woman so much (and to her knowledge, Mary Margaret is pretty clueless as well). “And as I now I realize that you have no plans to leave in the near future, and it is likely best that we come to an arrangement.”

 

Emma is floored. An arrangement. Like…a truce? With Regina? “An arrangement?”

 

“Have trouble hearing, my dear? Yes. An arrangement. I believe we both have something to offer the other. “ With this, Regina leans forward, the robe opening slightly and yawning between her lace-covered breasts. “You want Henry. I want Henry to…appreciate me again.”

 

Emma knows her eyes are lingering on the exposed flesh of Regina’s chest, but it’s difficult enough to breathe, let alone get her eyes to stay appropriate places. “You want me to convince Henry to like you?”

 

“My, my, so many questions tonight, dear.” She gives Emma another tight smile and finishes the liquid in her glass. Emma takes note and follows suit, handing her empty glass to the now-vertical mayor. “I am simply proposing that we present a united front to him, and that you help to dispel some of those silly notions he has been harboring,” Regina says from the sidebar. She returns with two, rather full, glasses and hands one to Emma.

 

“That won’t make him like you, Regina.” Emma knows that Henry sees everything: the way Regina intimidates the entire town, the way she manipulates everything to go her way, the way people _fear_ her.

 

It’s then that Emma notices the red around the powerful woman’s eyes and the puffy skin underneath. She notices that there are three crystal glasses sitting on the bar and two in their hands, and that the wall behind Regina has a dark stain that falls in long fingers to the ground which glistens with refracted light.

 

“Then make him,” Regina says. It’s authoritative—but also tinged with a desperation that always tends to color Regina’s actions regarding her son. It’s always desperate affection, desperate worrying, desperate _love_.

 

Emma thinks back to that one high school teacher who quoted some literary guy: “We all lead lives of quiet desperation.” And she thinks, hell, Regina lives every day screaming it. Albeit behind cool smiles and those damned calculated chess moves.

 

“Regina, you know you can’t make somebody love you.”

 

It prompts a dark look and a cruel laugh to bubble out of Regina, and for a second, Emma sort of believes Henry’s fantasy that she’s the Evil Queen.

 

“Perhaps,” the woman answers musingly. “But I’m sure having the _Savior_ ,” she spits out the word like it’s dripping with poison, “standing by my side, telling him that I’m good and noble and a hero could eventually convince him to soften towards me.”

 

Emma doesn’t miss the wistfulness in the older woman’s eyes, nor the look of determined hardness that follows.

 

“You know I can’t do that to the kid, Regina.”

 

“What if I offered you something in return?” Regina responds carefully, enunciating her words so that Emma could feel the full effect of what she was saying.

 

The warnings cropped up again in her mind, but she pushes them away quickly. She’s far too fascinated by the brilliant ( _evil, menacing, destructive_ ) woman to listen to the reasonable part of her brain. “You mean in addition to time with Henry?”

 

“Yes.” The word is a whispered hiss, crackling over her skin. Dark brown eyes glint deviously, and Emma finds herself again unable to breathe from want and trepidation. Regina is a snake, hypnotizing her prey and poised to strike. Emma knows this—knows that she’s the prey—and still can’t find it within herself to care very much. It’s a good way to go, at least.

 

Regina drains her glass for the second time, this time opting to place the short crystal glass on the coffee table between them. Emma watches her every movement, drinking in the sight of the sheer amount of skin on display in front of her.

 

Regina’s slender fingers make their way to the silky purple belt at her waist. They deftly undo the knot there, and slowly part the fabric at her chest. “I’ve seen the way you look at me, Sheriff.” Her eyes are black, hooded. “You find me attractive.”

 

Attractive? That word was far too mild to describe Emma’s opinion of the mayor. Tantalizing. Alluring, Devastating. She made Emma’s mouth water and go dry at the same time she made her vision go red and her core flood.

 

“I think…” Regina shrugs the right shoulder of her robe so that it slides sensually down her arm, revealing a landscape of collarbone and lace and breast. “You would like it…” Regina’s left hand reaches up to cup her left breast, lifting it to display it to the panting blonde. “If you could touch.”

 

Her thumb sweeps in a wide arc over her breast, her dark eyes closing briefly under the sensation. It sounds too loud when Emma instinctively takes in a short, ragged breath, and Regina smiles widely. It’s all teeth and narrowed eyes and _predator waiting for prey to stumble_.

 

This makes Emma jolt back to reality. She physically leans back— _when had she leaned so far forward, anyway?—_ and takes a large, cleansing gulp of air. Regina had just offered her sex for their son’s good graces. It was a new pinnacle of desperation for the rejected woman, who only wanted her son’s love and could not fathom how to win it. What kind of woman throws her body at somebody like this, anyhow?

 

Emma knows. She knows _exactly_ what kind of woman does this. The foster care system is not often kind to young, beautiful girls who have nobody to tell them that they are worth more than their bodies and that there are other ways to ease that yawning desperation always pushing you two steps farther than you can go.

 

“Regina.” Emma starts, but the woman before her can already tell that it’s a protest. A denial.

 

“I’m attracted to you, too, Sheriff. If that makes this any easier for you,” Regina says quickly, and Emma knows what she’s saying is true. Her superpower hasn’t failed her yet. And if Regina’s pupils are anything to go by…

 

Emma, again, is floored. She had always recognized that the mayor was beautiful and alluring. Downright devastatingly sexy, sometimes, making for long, aching committee meetings and even longer lonely nights. Particularly when desks and dresses and heels and nylon were involved. But she had never once entertained the idea that the cold, calculating mayor returned the sentiment on any level.

 

“Regina,” Emma starts again. This time, she’s determined to finish the speech she’s rambled off to the mayor a thousand times in her head. Because, yeah, maybe she has been a little bit obsessed with her feud with Regina, and yeah, maybe she had rehearsed this because maybe it would work. Maybe they could start over, if only she would stop trying to control everything so damned much. “You’re worth so much more than this. You’re beautiful. You’re brilliant. You’re…honestly, very good at running this town. _You love Henry_. Just…drop the lies and the tricks and he will love you. We don’t— _you_ don’t—have to do this.”

 

When she finishes her schpeal, Emma notices that she is, once again, leaning forward over the coffee table, merely inches from those smooth legs and inviting breasts. The brown eyes across from her are wide, the red lips parted slightly in astonishment. The moment passes quickly enough in Regina, though, because then her brown eyes are narrowed and darting, assessing every point of Emma’s face and searching for _something_.

 

And then Regina is sliding out of her seat and crossing the short distance around the table to Emma. Her smooth, olive legs are sliding around Emma’s thighs, her knees slotting into the back of the couch. Her firm hands are sliding up the column of Emma’s neck and grasping tightly onto either side of her strong jaw. The eyes continue their questing, peering deeply into Emma’s own.

 

They must have found part of what they were looking for, because suddenly Regina’s lips are on hers, sliding against Emma’s again and again. Her fingers move into Emma’s blonde curls and Emma is reminded again of that punch—that one, raw display of physical aggression in the normally staid woman.

 

This felt like that punch: uncalculated and deliciously real. Emma isn’t sure what prompted it, exactly, but she knows that Regina wants this as much as she does. Her body moves against Regina’s, writhing in jerky tandem with the woman’s own, more sensuous, undulations.

 

Emma knows she shouldn’t be doing this. She knows she should shove the woman off of her and get out as fast as she possibly can…

 

But _fuck_ —this woman does something visceral to her. It cuts right down to her bones, which rattle and quake in her presence. Which beg for more as they crumble and disintegrate under her sharp, challenging gaze.

 

She kisses Regina back like she is a scuba diver in the Mariana Trench and Regina is oxygen.

 

Their lips slide over one another and their tongues swirl and claim (hell, Regina claims, Emma just struggles to keep the fuck up). Regina nips roughly at Emma’s bottom lip and Emma just knows it’s gonna be split for days. She wants to care, but really she only thinks of the sweet way Regina’s tongue slides over the cracked part over and over, thoroughly owning it.

 

The evil woman’s deft hands are on Emma’s top button and pop it open with such practiced ease. Emma wonders how many times she’s done this; how many people she’s claimed.

 

She worries—not about the number—but about the fact that she’s _only_ one of many. She wants Regina to remember this night and beg for another.

 

“Regina—” Emma pants, drawing in a deep breath as soft fingertips slide over and around the elastic waistband of her cotton underwear. Her fingers are smooth and cool against Emma’s flushed skin. “I have to know—” She lets out another harsh breath through her nose as the brunette above her slides two deft fingers over the cotton directly above her clit. “Is this a one-time thing?”

 

And Regina licks her— _she fucking licks her_ —in response, the rough flat of her tongue scraping up the column of her neck and ending at a neglected right earlobe. “It depends on how much you please me, Miss Swan.” The deep, raspy words vibrate through Emma’s entire being, and she almost comes undone right then and there. Damn this woman knows how to use Emma’s own weaknesses against her. And Regina’s voice—well, it’s something that has held Emma hostage more times than she wishes to recall.

 

Shame slithers somewhere within Emma. She knows the Mayor knows that she is attracted to her. She knows that the Mayor is only using this attraction for her own gain. But—gods—does this feel so _real_. The fingers buried in her blonde curls at the base of her neck; the dark, almost black, blown pupils of the woman above her; the light whimper she releases as she finds how wet the blonde’s panties are.

 

This can’t be one-sided. Not totally—right?

 

Emma’s hips thrust up, seeking more contact from the long fingers of the older woman above her. Emma knows she needs to take her tight jeans off. There can’t possibly be enough room for Regina to fuck her like she needs it: hard, rough and fast like the New Jersey drivers on I-95.

 

Emma can’t even remember the last time she’s been with someone who can give her what she really wants in a lover. Neal had been hopeless in bed—more a friend who could make her laugh than someone who could rock her world. The lovers that had followed him had been brief, selfish and ultimately unsatisfying. Emma knew—gods did she know—that Regina would give as good as she expected to be given to her. But that was a whole new level of _do not go there_ that Emma really, really shouldn’t entertain.

 

She finds herself shirtless and moaning embarrassingly loudly not thirty seconds later.

 

“Regina,” Emma manages to pant. “I want you so badly.”

 

The admission is either an olive branch or a death sentence, but she utters it without regret. The next words, though, she regrets as soon as they cross her tongue. “But we should stop. We should—god I hate saying this because it sounds so cliché—we should talk.”

 

Regina slowly moves from her position against Emma’s neck at the words. Her full lips release reddened skin, her deep coffee eyes glinting with pride at the suggestion of a bruise. It makes Emma’s cunt weep.

 

“I do not offer my services to just anyone, Miss Swan.” Regina says haughtily, smoothing her hair and primly stepping off Emma’s lap. It makes Emma sad because she knows Regina has done exactly this sort of thing before—offering her body up as payment for something she wanted or needed—and she wants to tell Regina that her body is sacred and beautiful and wants to shower her with all sorts of hackneyed phrases that she knows will fall on deaf ears (flattery, to her, is deference and certainly not truth).

 

“I don't want services, Regina. I just want you,” Emma says, and it’s the most honest thing that’s ever passed her lips. She just hopes Regina will see it as such.

 

**(Spoiler alert: she doesn’t)**

 

 

“I want to see Henry twice a week.” Regina’s shoulders are squared, closed off. Her voice is low and tight. Her right hand is moving to lift the sleeve of her robe to cover the exposed shoulder of her skin; her head flicks once, twice, to get the mussed hair back in place. The seams of the Mayor are closing once more, and Emma wants nothing more than to rip them open again.

 

“No.”

 

The look of disbelief followed by unfettered rage would be enough to make a weaker woman acquiesce immediately. The brunette’s plump upper lip curled and her eyes spat fire that just barely preceded the vitriol that succeeded it. “He is _my_ son!”

 

Emma wants to shout back. She wants to complete the circle that they always inevitably fall into, the track worn and comfortable under their blistered feet. The hollow words of cruelty; the denouement weighted down with all the inevitability of Groundhog’s Day.

 

So Emma simply doesn’t let herself fall into it. “He will always be your son, Regina. But that doesn’t mean he will always _want_ to be. You have to earn his trust back.”

 

“You've been his mother for all of five minutes and you think you know anything?” Regina scoffs, her eyes wide in mock disbelief.

 

“I know what not to do,” Emma responds quietly, willing her mind not to take her to the memories of the many foster parents who had failed her. Of the foster parents who feigned assiduous care and affection under the watchful eyes of social workers, of how it made her feel even more hollow inside because she knew it wasn’t real. Of the foster parents who truly cared for her but ultimately lacked the financial wherewithal, so she oftentimes went without lunch or shoes that fit her.

 

She gave Regina a sad smile, grateful that her kid at least had a mom that truly loved him and cared for him…as fucked up as she was about showing it. “I’m glad you love him, though. For what it’s worth, I think he loves you, too.”

 

And the weird thing was, Regina smiled back. It was shaky and tenuous, like the woman wasn’t sure how to quite do it to show happiness rather than mask pain or scorn. But it was there, underneath eyes shining with tears Emma knew the stubborn woman would never let fall. But before long, her lips were pursed and her shoulders tightening again, and that, too, had Emma smiling because it was strangely nice to be able to know this complex woman so intimately. To be able to read her movements, anticipate her actions—to make her smile, if only for a moment…

 

Emma swallows harshly, telling herself the same things she always told herself when these thoughts surfaced. That Regina would never be able to love her, that she was an idiot for even entertaining the idea, that she needed to suck it up, maybe think about pancakes—yeah, pancakes.

 

Which was difficult to do when you had an entrancing, half-clothed goddess offering her body to you and alternately looking like she’s going to flay you alive and then capping the whole thing off by baring her soul to you. It’s enough to give a girl whiplash (and enough to make a masochistic fuck of a person—case in point, one Emma fucking Swan—dizzy for more).

 

Regina still hasn’t spoken, but Emma knows from the way that her jaw is clenching and her eyes are hardening that Mayor Mills will be back soon. She only has a brief window of opportunity to make her _understand_. It's not about keeping Henry away from her; it’s about making sure that Henry isn’t scared to be around her, that he doesn’t act out and make Regina latch on tighter. “I’m not going to stop Henry from seeing you, Regina. But I’m not going to make him, either. It’s his decision.”  

 

Emma really doesn’t expect Regina to say, “Okay.” And she really, really doesn’t expect Regina to offer her another one of those sad half-smiles and politely lead her to the door.

 

She expects a terse insult rather than a soft, “Good night” and a slammed door rather than the quiet snick of the lock clicking into place. It’s a solid minute before Emma even trusts herself to stumble back to her cruiser.

 

_What the hell was that?_

 

After all that the two of them had been through, Emma knows she shouldn’t get her hopes up with the volatile woman. She had feigned truces before, sealed with wide smiles and level, icy eyes. This time felt different to Emma—but only time would tell her how stupid she was in trusting the inimitable Regina Mills.


	2. A Mother's Love

It’s when Emma doesn’t see Regina for three days that she starts becoming suspicious. 

There were no accidental run-ins on the sidewalk or in Granny’s. There were no “mandatory meetings” that Emma had never been apprised of, and that Regina had the effrontery to claim had been scheduled for weeks. 

There were no attempts to access Henry, who had been staying at her new apartment with Mary Margaret, refusing to come home “and live with an evil queen.” 

The distinct lack of Regina in their lives had both mother and son decidedly off-kilter—so much so that the ever-oblivious Mary Margaret posed the question, “Are you two okay?” with her nose scrunched and her doe eyes wide with concern. 

Henry continued wordlessly to push his mashed potatoes around on his plate, avoiding the breadcrumb-encrusted pork chop and completely circumventing the carrot and pea medley. Emma offered her sweet roommate a reassuring smile, nudging her moody son so that he gave a tight, “Yeah,” in response. 

Emma knew Regina hadn’t stopped by at school to bring him a lunch like she usually would because he actually ate the crap she threw in his lunchbox the past three days (she’s sure she can’t get away with packing a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a bearclaw again tomorrow, and she’s not really sure what she’s going to do because grilled cheese does not pack well). 

She also knows that Regina hasn’t walked him home from school because he hasn’t come home wearing that small little smile that he quickly tries to wipe away when he knows somebody’s looking. She’s also had to answer a teacher’s phone call asking why Henry hasn’t done his homework for the past couple of days…

That was a big dose of parenting 101 that made Emma realize just how in over her head she was in raising the kid. Regina was the one who asked him about his homework. She was the one who sat down with him if he was having trouble with his long division or whatever they taught kids Henry’s age. Emma hadn’t even shown up to half the schooling she had, on paper, completed. 

But it’s really when Regina’s absence hits the day number ten that Emma begins to seriously panic. 

Sure, she’d seen Regina around. Little glimpses of black pumps and an impossibly curvy ass, a flash of deep brown hair in a characteristic bob; a note through Regina’s secretary cancelling their set-in-stone monthly meeting to go over the previous month’s crime statistics. If Regina were planning something nefarious, it was going to be a doozy of an outcome…whatever her long game was. But if she weren’t plotting anything—what was she playing at, exactly? 

She had heard rumors (at Granny’s, of course, from the ever-knowledgeable Ruby) that Regina was being strangely pleasant, albeit in a mildly disturbing sort of way. She finally granted Tom Clark’s request to fill the egregiously giant pothole in front of the Pharmacy, and Mary Margaret said that Regina had actually enquired as to how she was doing the other day in a decidedly odd manner that made her (apparently) look like she was passing a kidney stone rather than with her usual plastic politicians’ smile. 

“I felt a little creeped out by it, honestly, but it seemed…genuine?” Mary Margaret had told her, her voice lilting up in befuddlement. Emma had laughed heartily, imagining what the woman’s face must have looked like, but when she had settled down she had only felt more dejected. 

None of that matters right now, though, because Henry is sick. He’s been wan and clammy for two days now, alternatively puking up anything left in his stomach and falling into deep, whimpering sleeps. He’s asked for Regina twice now, and Emma knows she owes it to both mother and son to reach out to the elusive woman like she had promised. 

She just wishes it wouldn’t fill her with quite so much excitement and sinking dread. How could she face the woman she had just furiously made out with? The one she had been thinking about nearly every minute that had passed since then. How could she look her in the eyes and not want—not ache to feel those plush lips pressed against hers again and feel those tortured eyes burn into her with something much deeper than contempt or calculated dismissal. 

Regina Mills was a sinful mystery that Emma’s mind just loved to contemplate. 

Emma isn’t too surprised at herself when she finds her fingers fumbling to press the “call” button on her phone. She probably shouldn't be breathing the same air as the entrancing Mayor right now: she’d probably short-circuit in a way that would leave her speechless and the unflappable Mayor haughtier than ever. 

She was decidedly not feeling anything below her navel at the thought of dark flashing eyes and an all-knowing, triumphant smirk. Not. At. All. 

The phone rings and uncharacteristically goes to voicemail, leading Emma to release a sharp breath of air as she hears the cool, clipped voice of Regina on the recorded message. 

“You’ve reached the cell phone of Mayor Mills. If it is regarding a town emergency, please dial the Sheriff’s office. Otherwise, please leave a message after the tone.” 

Hell, Emma was on Regina’s voice message…sort of. The thought brought a small smile to her lips. It likely was there before Graham died, though, the thought of which immediately made the smile fade even quicker than it had appeared. 

“Hey Regina, it’s Sheriff Swan. Emma. Emma Swan.” Emma cursed herself for her inability to leave a coherent voice message to the woman. “I, uh…Henry’s sick. And he really needs you. Do you think you can come by the apartment as soon as you get this message? Um, thanks.” She shut her phone with exasperation at herself, wondering if she should try to track down the woman in person. 

The thought was interrupted, however, by the loud ding of Emma’s phone. 

R: What are his symptoms? 

Emma smiled, both in knowing that Regina had deliberately ignored her call and had immediately listened to her message. 

E: He’s been puking for two days now. 

R: I’ll be right over. 

It’s maybe twenty minutes later that Regina arrives on the doorstep, a large tote bag in hand and a glower on her face. 

“What the hell have you been doing to my son?” she spits, shoving past Emma without so much as a glance her way. 

“Nothing I—” 

“Have you been feeding him peanut butter?” Regina asks, sweeping up the stairs to the loft with all of her usual grace and intimidation. Emma hears the door creak open and hears Regina’s voice drop into the soft, rounded syllables of motherhood. Emma pauses a moment on the stairs, at war with herself, but ultimately trudges up the stairs, unwilling to miss watching Regina in her element. 

That isn’t to say that Regina wasn’t in her element when she was demanding things of people, or when she was tending assiduously to her apple tree or when she was efficiently balancing the city budget or measuring out the ingredients for her famous lasagna. No, she made all those things look as effortless as swimming to a penguin. But Regina practically glowed when she was around Henry, all of her sharp edges falling away to reveal a love so overt it was almost tactile. 

It was this Regina that was the most dangerous to Emma. It suffused her with such warmth and affection and—dare she voice it?—hope for what she and Regina could never be. She was a woman capable of so much love, and the parts of Emma that existed far down simply ached for it.

Emma stands in the doorway, unwilling to impose herself on the mother-son pair but also very much unwilling to move away. 

“Mom?” 

“Yes, honey, I’m here.” Regina smooths Henry’s hair away from his sticky forehead and gives him a lingering kiss on the top of his head. Her arms move forward for an instant, as if she’s going to embrace him, but she stops and instead says, “How about I run you a cool bath and get you out of these pajamas?” 

Henry nods weakly, smiling gratefully at his mom. “Can you make me golden milk?” he asks bashfully, an uncharacteristic blush on his cheeks. Perhaps the kid was starting to feel the shame of acting like a total shit to the woman who raised him. Emma recognizes that Regina certainly wasn’t blameless in the whole affair, but growing up, Emma would have killed for a mom like Regina. 

Regina’s eyes light up as he poses his shy question, “I’ve brought everything for it. Assuming Miss Swan has a stove and a pot.” Regina turns to look at Emma with an indecipherable look in her eyes and some of the usual sharp edges back in place. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart,” Regina says, turning once more to her son before getting up. 

As Regina brushes by Emma, she hisses, “There is no need to monitor me like a maximum security prisoner, Miss Swan.” 

And because Emma can’t exactly say, ‘I’ve missed you,’ or the creepier, ‘I like watching you with our son,’ Emma just nods and slinks downstairs to the kitchen table where she finds one of Mary Margaret’s trashy romance novels. She could sneak back up to her room to get her laptop…there were a few episodes of Leverage she could definitely slam before her shift started at eight. 

When Regina steps delicately down the creaking stairs, Emma is three chapters into the short, chunky paperback that is detailing the saga of straight-laced Jane the Pioneer and Charlie the hardened Sheriff in a rough frontier town. 

“I see you have picked up your roommate’s…unseemly reading preferences.” The comment is delivered with a sculpted eyebrow and the barest hint of a smirk. Her eyes flick down to the cover, which Emma quickly scrambles to obscure. “Heart Wrangler? Really, Miss Swan?” The woman’s red lips disappear as she struggles to hold in a smile. 

“Here’s the thing. My laptop is upstairs and you were upstairs and I just wanted to give you some room and…and you don’t care, do you?” 

Emma watches silently, cheeks burning, as Regina begins unpacking a number of items from the large tote bag that she had brought with her. Emma hasn’t been this close to the woman since—well, since they were in very close proximity that night. Though Regina seems calmer and less stiff, she seems ever the more tense for it, a rigidness borne of turmoil rather than projection. 

She rummages around until she finds a suitable pot, and Emma notices her fingers curl tightly around the handles until the knuckles had blossomed from soft olive to a deathly white. There is the pursing of lips, an almost-silent release of air, and the briefest lingering of eyelids over coffee eyes. 

Something was wrong with Regina. 

“Is everything okay?” Emma asks softly, knowing already that the words aren’t enough but not knowing at all what was. 

The wooden spoon stops in its slow counterclockwise motion. Regina pauses, sighs, and drawls in her perfectly exasperated tone, “I’m perfectly fine, Miss Swan, now that I’ve been granted permission from the gods on high to see my son.” 

Yeah, Emma really shouldn’t have said anything. Why even try? Was Emma just masochistic, and enjoyed running into a five foot deep, twelve foot high steel wall labeled Regina Mills? 

As she normally ran away from everything that came near her (Henry aside, because he was all innocent persuasion and hopeful, toothy grins), it actually makes a sick kind of sense that Emma constantly found herself running towards the one person who managed to be more of an emotional vault that she is. 

When the liquid is hot, Regina slowly pours the golden concoction into a large mug and sets a number of what looks like cookies on a tea plate (it’s such a Mary Margaret thing to have fucking tea plates, because Emma surely wouldn’t be caught dead with them). She watches as the woman takes measured steps up the stairs, her hands shaking slightly and her voice catching as she greeted Henry again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise you, sex shall happen. All in good time, my friends.


	3. The Arrangement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Emma and Regina finally come to an arrangement.

Crinkled brown leaves have definitively given way to denuded trees and brisk winds that sometimes bring light flurries that melt as soon as they hit the ground. It’s been another month, and Emma as seen nary a hair on Regina’s head. For as much as the woman made herself known every damned second of every day when Emma first arrived in Storybrooke, Regina sure knew how to make herself scarce when she wanted to as well. The Mayor cancelled all one-on-one meetings with Emma, sent all important business by proxy, and had officially broken up the town meetings into “more functional” working groups that would report back to her via email on a weekly basis. 

Emma had been placed into the “Town Welfare Committee,” and, by some ungodly miracle, it was even more boring than the official biweekly meeting and town halls. Emma certainly didn’t miss the pointed glares and harsh quips of the mayor, nor did she miss the fire and quiet triumph in the woman’s eyes when she managed to throw Emma off her game. Nope, this is exactly how Emma liked her life: utterly boring and challenge-free. 

What really kills her is that she knows that the little shit has seen the woman almost every day. He’s come home smiling again, and he actually told her in a way that was so very Regina that she should stop packing him lunches altogether. 

“Ma, I couldn’t even get Pongo to eat the lunches you pack me. I’ve got it covered, okay?” 

So Emma isn’t the greatest at packing school lunches. It’s not like she should feel inadequate or anything. The kid has his other mother to do that for him, anyway. Emma’s started taking him to the park to teach him how to throw a football, and she’s also started taking him to the library after school to feed that big brain of his. She’s not really sure where he gets it from—it must be Regina—because she and Neal weren’t exactly the type to hit the books. 

Did Regina like to read? 

Emma didn’t know, but she imagined the woman did. She could see her thumbing through a George Eliot tome in bed, reading glasses perched on her nose, for exactly a half an hour before finally turning out the lamp on the side table and going to bed. She could also see the woman lounging on the couch in her study on a Saturday morning, the light streaming through the large bay window and illuminating the words of Machiavelli or Plato. 

There was a part of Emma that longed to see Regina in these intimate moments—the Regina who pads groggily to the bathroom to brush her teeth, or the Regina who revels in the momentary warmth of a fresh load of dry laundry. The Regina who slices apples and rubs them ever-so-slightly with lemon juice to leave in the refrigerator as an afternoon snack for her son. The Regina who reaches for a bottle of wine with a long, heavy sigh after a hard day. 

“Sheriff Swan I’m here for—”

“The weekly dispatch dataset. I know.” The words come out far more heavily than Emma wishes them to. Emma takes the proffered thumbdrive from the woman —Ariella, was it?—and copies the excel spreadsheet onto it. Why Regina wouldn’t accept it via email or why Regina wouldn’t just set up a government-wide intranet, Emma would never understand. 

“How are you liking the new job with the Mayor?” Emma asks conversationally. 

“Oh, it’s just wonderful! The mayor is so accommodating, and the benefits are so much better than when I was a lifeguard.” 

Emma starts at this. “The Mayor? Accommodating?” The woman wouldn’t accommodate a gnat if it didn’t fit perfectly into her existence. But then again, perhaps that was the Old Regina. The one who actually existed in Emma’s life. This new Regina, whom everybody in town except for she seemed to interact with, might be something completely different. 

The redhead stares curiously at Emma, her piercing green eyes searching for answers to some question Emma isn’t quite sure of. “Why, yes. She’s been nothing but understanding since I started three weeks ago.” She laughs lightly. “There was a bit of a learning curve when I first started.” 

“Huh.” Emma taps her fingers against the keyboard as she processes this information. She had heard nothing but good things about the mayor in the last month. According to the Mirror, the woman’s approval ratings had skyrocketed, not that it mattered when the election in two weeks was completely uncontested. But still. Henry had even stopped bringing up the curse as much, and had completely stopped calling his mother the Evil Queen. 

And Emma had heard not a peep from the woman. No threats to run her out of town. Nary a smirk. Not the hint of a gloat. There had to be a catch. There was always a catch. 

 

Emma gets a call from a neighbor about a ‘disturbance’ at 108 Mifflin Street two days later. It’s around midnight and there is a November chill in the air that makes Emma regret choosing only a wifebeater and her token red jacket. She sees one light on in the mansion downstairs, possibly in the study, and hears a loud crash that has her running up the long driveway with her gun drawn. 

The front door is, of course, locked, but Emma knows exactly where the mayor keeps her spare key (it’s under the statue of a pan a few feet away in the garden). Emma feels pretty proud that she knows that, but her heart is pounding as she fumbles to get the key in the right lock because she hears another crash and all she can think is ‘Regina’s in there.’ 

The door finally opens and Emma barrels through, heading toward the source of the crashes with the name ‘Regina’ dying before it ever passed her lips. The house around her looked completely undisturbed—immaculate, as usual. There had been no sign of forced entry, and yet there was the sound of crunching glass and heavy breathing coming from the room just down the hall. 

She peers through the half-closed door, and almost doesn’t believe what her eyes are seeing. 

“Regina?” Emma whispers, slowly holstering her gun and holding her hands up in a sign of submission. She slides through the door slowly, stepping into the too-bright room that has been utterly torn to pieces. 

The brunette’s usually sharp brown eyes are unfocused, and she blinks stupidly at Emma’s presence as if her eyelids could make Emma go away. 

“Miss…Sheriff,” Regina greets, and the words are lengthened with drink. Emma can see the open crystal decanter on the desk, seemingly the only two things that had avoided destruction. The brunette’s black dress is askew, her hair disheveled and there is a steady stream of blood dripping down her left wrist onto her limp hand. This was…not what Emma had expected to find. 

“We should get you fixed up,” Emma says, smiling in a way she hopes looks non-threatening. She knows a wounded animal when she sees one. 

“There’s no fixing me. I know. I’ve tried,” Regina responds heavily, sitting back against the desk, the broken glass underfoot crunching with her movement. 

Emma wants to press, but isn’t quite sure what will provoke more destruction and what will get the fragile woman to the bathroom where she can tend to the bleeding wrist. 

“Why don’t we go—”

“I’ve tried running,” Regina says, picking up a golden apple on her desk. “I’ve tried kickboxing. I’ve tried pills. I’ve tried drinking. I’ve tried…” she pauses, looking at the fresh blood trickling out of the wound, much deeper than Emma had originally thought, on her wrist, “That. Nothing works. It won’t go away.” 

Emma knows she shouldn’t ask, but she does anyway. “What won’t go away?” She inches closer to the woman, her boots pressing over sharp glass and duller porcelain. 

“The evil,” Regina answers simply, her fingers running over the smooth apple. The two words send a chill down Emma’s spine, and she isn’t quite sure why. “The need to destroy. To start things, to end things. To force things.” She sighs, suddenly seeming far more sober than she had ten seconds ago. Her eyes are downcast, contemplative, her body language making Emma wonder if Regina even realizes that Emma is really here right now. “I thought that if I were good, if I redeemed myself, if Henry loved me again…that maybe it would all go away. But it hasn’t. If anything,” Regina lets out a low, bitter laugh that makes Emma’s heart feel slow and cold, “It’s gotten worse.” 

“So you’re like, what, going through Evil withdrawal, or something?” Emma jokes, wincing when Regina doesn’t smile in response. Well, when had Regina ever responded to her humor anyway?

“Something like that.” 

Emma tentatively grabs Regina’s good hand, telling herself not to marvel in its softness, or in how perfectly it fits in her own. She tilts her head toward the door and begins leading her to the bathroom. “Well maybe you just shouldn’t have gone cold turkey like you did.” 

“Oh?” Regina asks idly as Emma takes her other hand and jerks it under the softly running water. The woman stiffens, “That’s my injured hand you are manhandling, not some prison escapee.” 

Emma mumbles a quick sorry and tries not to focus too much on the red water swirling around in the sink. “You could, yunno, try weaning yourself off instead. It’s how I quit smoking.” 

“I’ve seen you smoking out in back of the Sheriff’s station on several occasions, Miss Swan.” 

Yep, that was the Regina she knew. It almost brought a smile to Emma’s face. She turned off the tap and opened an alcohol swab, pressing it as gently as possible to the rather deep wound. Regina lets out a sharp hiss, but otherwise doesn’t complain. 

“Those were particularly stressful days.” 

“You find liberating escaped shelter kittens from loving schoolchildren stressful?” Regina asks dryly. 

Emma remembers that day. She had patrolled for a couple of hours and had only managed to strike up a particularly boring conversation with Mother Superior, which she was all too happy about ditching when a call came in from a volunteer regarding escaped kittens from the shelter. Emma had tracked them down to the school bus stop, where a gaggle of second graders had been happily playing with the little fluffballs. Emma had almost taken one home that day. The little fella had a gimpy front right paw and was essentially a grey pouf with intelligent green eyes and a sassy personality. That old part of her, though, the one that always balked at hanging pictures on the wall and having more than two items of any possible iteration of tableware, stopped her. Who was she to presume she could care for another creature? 

She had been so mind-numbingly bored and desperate for any type of stimulation, that she had pulled out the pack of American Spirits from their spot hidden behind useless files in her desk and had chain smoked three of them while trying to sink an empty soda can into the dumpster behind the station. 

Of course the mayor would catch her doing that. She probably had pictures filed away somewhere, too. 

“I’m just saying, Regina. Maybe cold turkey wasn’t the way to go. Maybe you need to indulge yourself a little bit.” Emma finishes bandaging the woman’s wrist, giving it an awkward pat before letting the arm drop. 

“And what, pray tell,” Regina purrs, licking her lips. “Should I do to indulge myself, Miss Swan?” 

Whoa. Regina was—very, very close, her body almost touching Emma at every point—and her eyes were   
dark, stormy,   
her lip curled  
Every expressive angle of her face taunting, challenging  
Just like the day that Emma had attacked Regina’s tree with a chainsaw.   
There were hands, hard and possessive on her hips. 

Was Emma missing something here? 

She tried to take a deep, calming breath, but it got lodged somewhere in her throat, and the resultant rise of her chest brought her in contact with Regina’s soft breasts. 

Gods that—

Not again. This should not happen again. 

But maybe this was exactly what Regina needed, and the gods only knew how much Emma needed this. Her expert fingers could only do so much when they had the memory of Regina Mills, silk robe askew, to haunt them. 

Emma swallows audibly at the dark look in Regina’s eyes that told her the brunette was contemplating all of the evil things she could do to Emma. The thought went straight to Emma’s core, dripping with want and anticipation. 

“Use me,” Emma breathes, and that’s all she needs to say before Regina begins tearing her world apart seam by deliriously painful seam.


	4. Legos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sex and sex again (our ladies just can't get enough).

Emma isn’t quite certain how she is able to walk to her car in the early morning once Regina is finally done with her. Seeing the woman resting so peacefully, her hair splayed out on the pillow and her face lax with bliss was a true gift, and Emma really tried not to linger too much on the mumbled, “You may leave now, Miss Swan,” that had crushed her just a little.

 

There also was the unbelievable pain in her upper back, around her wrists and right under the curve of her ass. She knows she won’t be able to sit down comfortably for at least two days, and she’s pretty certain she’s strained something in her upper back. But with every movement that pains her, Emma can’t help the surge of arousal and the memory that comes with it.

 

_Emma’s hands are tied to the top of the metal headboard, her naked body arced like a vertical asymptote. Her arms are shaking with the effort of keeping herself upright, the muscles straining as Regina continues her relentless onslaught, bringing Emma close to the edge and then stopping abruptly enough to give Emma psychological whiplash. The seventh time—or was it the eighth at this point?—Emma begins begging to come, the words wholly not her own, hanging about her like a cloud._

_Regina unties her with a devious smirk, only to flip her over and retie her using only one rope. She brings her cunt to just out of reach over Emma’s face and begins touching herself, her thin, sure fingers audibly slicking through her copious arousal. Emma has never seen Regina Mills so undone before. It’s a whole new type of dangerous, and Emma knows she already hooked._

_Emma could smell the thick, warm scent of her and longed to have her tongue delving into Regina’s swollen folds in place of those fingers. Regina comes silently, her torso leaning over Emma so she can grab ahold of the headboard to keep herself upright. After a few rough pants, she straightens again, smiling a breathless smile that quickly turns cruel._

_Regina waves her arousal-coated fingers in front of Emma, who pulls fruitlessly against her bindings for them. She laughs callously, sharply, the sound clawing into the very corners of Emma’s sex-addled mind. It’s only then, when Emma is struggling and whimpering that Regina fully unties her and allows Emma to take her release by her own shaking fingers._

 

Emma sees nothing of the mayor for three agonizing days until she is abruptly called into the woman’s office by a bubbly Ariella.

 

“Sheriff Swan! I’m so glad you’re in. The mayor would like to see you. She says it’s urgent?”

 

Emma wills her mind not to go _there_ , but her body does anyway, traitorous fuck that it is. Regina probably just needs to ask her a question about Henry. Or about the downed tree on Main, or maybe about that new pair of heels she’s wearing today that makes her ass look amazing but might not exactly be work appropriate. Yeah, that has to be it, right?

 

When she walks into Regina’s office a few minutes later, she hears a voice coming from the en suite bathroom. “Remove your clothes, Miss Swan.”

 

The command catches Emma off-guard, so her first reaction is to challenge it. “I have a name, Regina.” She pulls out the syllables of the woman’s name like cotton, stretching them until they are just wisps. It makes her feel powerful even though she knows she has about as much power over the brunette woman as Leroy had over Sister Astrid.

 

Regina saunters out of the bathroom wearing a dark, ribbed strap-on over her black work pants and Emma just about faints from arousal right on the spot. “I’m sorry, Em-ma,” Regina teases, drawing out the syllables just as Emma had, except where Emma’s voice was rough with anger Regina’s was slick with sin. “And here I was under the impression that you were aroused by it.” She whispers the last part into the shell of Emma’s ear, warmed by the humidity of the woman’s breath, which sends a visible shudder down Emma’s weak, weak body.

 

“Remove your clothes, Miss Swan. I won’t ask you again.”

 

Thus it is with half anticipation and half shame that Emma disrobes, in the middle of the workday, in the middle of her boss’s office, halfway to adoration and so, so far gone.

  
Emma thinks she’s gonna remember this one for awhile.

 

“Hands on the desk, Miss Swan.”

 

And yeah, okay, maybe hearing her name coming from Regina’s lips _like that_ did a little bit of something to her.

 

She puts her hands on the desk, the glass cold against her palms.

 

“Lean forward,” Regina commands, her heeled foot kicking Emma’s legs open so that she has no choice but to press her naked body on the cold glass as she falls against it, a harsh hiss passing from her lips at the feeling.

 

Regina places one hand against Emma’s lower back, pressing it down into the glass so that Emma bows her back, her ass and shoulders pressing upwards. “Good girl,” Regina praises before smacking Emma’s ass so hard it brings tears to the blonde’s eyes.

 

“Is everything okay in there?” Ariella calls nervously from the other side of the door.

 

“Just fine, Miss Mar. Miss Swan just dropped some files,” Regina calls coolly as she runs one finger down the length of Emma’s back, drawing a quiet whimper from the blonde. Emma’s heart is pounding in her ears with anticipation.

 

“Okay. Just call me if you or Sheriff Swan need anything!” Ariella calls cheerily, and the women listen to the sound of her shoes against the marble fade away.

 

“Well, it looks like someone just couldn’t keep quiet,” Regina says, the words unctuous and saccharine, reminding Emma of the Regina she had met when she first came to Storybrooke.

 

“But _you_ were the one who—”

 

Regina grabs a fistful of Emma’s hair and yanks back—hard. “Did I ask for your opinion?” she hisses.

 

Emma isn’t really sure if she’s supposed to answer the question or not, so she just shakes her head, the motion pulling painfully at the taught hairs in Regina’s iron grasp.

 

“Correct. Open your mouth, Miss Swan.” Emma isn’t really sure why, but she obeys, and feels smooth silk being pressed into her mouth. It’s pulled tight around her face and knotted with deft fingers behind her head, effectively gagging her. Emma swallows against the uncomfortable silk in her mouth, breathing heavily through her nose with the action.

 

“Now, Miss Swan, I want you to touch yourself like you do when you’re thinking of me.”

 

Just the thought of Regina watching her masturbating makes the blonde moan into her gag, which more or less stops the noise. Emma gathers up the significant wetness dripping out of her cunt, making sure to coat her fingers thoroughly, and begins lazily running them up and down her slit, teasing the woman she knows is watching with rapt attention.

 

After a couple of minutes of not really entering herself and not really touching her own clit, Emma hears a frustrated groan from Regina, who hisses, “Useless Sheriff” before roughly pushing away Emma’s hand and grabbing hold of Emma’s long blonde hair again.

 

“Fuck,” Emma mumbles around her gag. She feels Regina pull her hair harder in response. Emma whimpers—she fucking _whimpers_ —as Regina begins rocking her hips against Emma’s, the cock brushing against her wet cunt erratically, never quite entering her. As the movements become more defined, Emma pushes back against the cock, desperate to get it inside her already.

 

She feels thin, but strong fingers wrap around her throat in response. An index finger presses harshly above the hollow of her collarbone, instantly making Emma gasp for air. At the same moment, Regina rolls her hips to enter Emma in one smooth, agonizing motion, the resultant cry Emma would have emitted muffled by the silk and her current lack of airflow.

 

Had Emma not been paying attention to every minute motion of the woman above her, she wouldn’t have noticed the way Regina’s fingers lingered in Emma’s hair for a moment before she reattached her hands roughly once more. Her hips begin moving in rough, strong thrusts, the rounded, ribbed edges of the cock pulling pleasurably within Emma. Emma wishes she could feel Regina’s soft skin sliding against hers, now slick with sweat but all she feels is the rough material of Regina’s work pants chafing at her ass and the backs of her thighs.

 

“Gods, Regina!” Emma pants ineffectually through her gag, her fingers scrabbling at the cool glass and smudging it.

 

“Come for me, Em-ma,” Regina growls in her ear before biting down hard on Emma’s shoulder.

 

And Emma comes—gods, does she come. It slams down into her with force enough to make her eyes roll back in her head and her walls to flutter with wave after wave of the single most intense orgasm she had ever had.

 

She had never been able to come just from penetration before. Ever. As the orgasm begins to subside, Emma notices a distinct pain in her right shoulder. Just as she is moving to get a look at it, she sees Regina’s glistening cock being shoved into her face.

 

Without having to be asked, Emma knows what is expected of her. She opens her mouth wide and eagerly takes the cock into her mouth despite the fact that her body feels like lead and her mind is swimming with endorphins. She feels Regina’s hand tighten in her hair once more and isn’t too surprised when the woman starts using it to move Emma’s head up and down her cock at will.

 

When the cock is clean of her come and instead slick with her spit, Regina pulls Emma off of her roughly, a pleased smile on her face.

 

It looks altogether too much like the look Regina wears when she’s gloating and it makes Emma’s blood boil for a few seconds before Emma realizes that it’s been far too long since she’s seen that look on the brunette woman’s face. Emma desperately wants to kiss Regina, but they haven’t kissed since _that_ night in Regina’s study, and Emma is loath to do anything to spook the skittish mayor.

 

“This meeting has been enlightening, Miss Swan. You may go now,” Regina says, retreating to the bathroom ostensibly to clean herself up.

 

After—fuck, after that, there is no way Emma’s just going to leave without even looking the woman in the eye. The image of Regina, bleeding and surrounded by broken glass is too fresh in her mind. She needs some sort of indication that Regina is _okay_.

 

Emma rips the silk scarf from out of her mouth. “Regina?” Emma slowly stands up from her position on the desk, this time the muscles in her lower back protesting the action. She pads, naked as the day she was born, to the bathroom, where Regina is already in a new pair of pants and is bent over at the waist to fix her eye makeup.

 

To say Regina was simply alluring was doing a disservice to the enchanting woman, but Emma isn’t quite sure how to describe how perfect she looks when she’s trying to be perfect.

 

“I have another meeting in,” Regina stops to check the watch sitting on the sinktop in front of her. “Seven minutes.”

 

“I—uh, okay. I just wanted to know how you were doing. I mean with the backing off of the cold turkey thing. Is it…is it helping?” Gods, can Emma be _any_ more awkward? Regina appraises Emma’s naked body with a quirked eyebrow and pursed lips.

 

“I will see you at my house tomorrow evening at nine o’ clock. Don’t bother bringing pajamas,” Regina answers with nary an emotion on her stolid face.

 

And right then, whether she knew it or not, Regina had drawn the line. This was purely sex without even the illusion of friendship, camaraderie or acquaintance. Emma would not ask any of the questions constantly plaguing her masochistic, infatuation-addled mind, and Regina would not even entertain the thought that Emma was even wondering these sorts of things.

 

Emma would be content with this. She had to be. She was having the best sex of her life with the hottest woman she had ever laid eyes on with absolutely no strings attached (there were ropes, yes, but _definitely_ no strings).

 

Emma, queen of No Strings Attached, couldn’t have known that when the tables were turned and she had so many little strands of ‘What if’ and ‘We could’ and ‘Our son’ and ‘Forever’ dangling over her head, that she would reach for them or die trying.

 

It was a couple of weeks after their first rendezvous that Henry noticed a change in his mother.

 

“Ma?” Henry asks Emma. They were in the middle of attempting to assemble some ungodly expensive Star Wars Lego set that had magically appeared at their doorstep earlier in day (they both know it was Regina, but neither of them voiced it). Emma, stubborn as all hell, refused to look at the instructions that Henry was dutifully adhering to.

 

“Yeah?” The stupid little black gun thingies weren’t attaching properly to what she assumed were the back of the spaceship.

 

“Have you noticed mom has been acting a little bit different?”

 

“Shit.” Emma looks down at the Lego pieces she’s almost certain she had manhandled into never coming apart ever again. Would Henry notice? She decides to play it off with a diversion. “I mean—you should never, ever say that word. It’s for moms only, okay?”

 

Henry regards her with a look that is _so Regina_. It says something to the effect of, ‘You’re a mildly amusing but ultimately worthless idiot, and you’re not getting away with whatever it is you’re trying to do.’

 

“Okay, okay,” Emma breaks under his stare. Maybe mom-ing him after half a year of not doing so wasn’t necessarily the greatest tactic. Too obvious. “I broke it,” Emma admits, offering the stuck piece to her ten-year-old son.

 

Henry regards her again, only this time it’s with the patented Regina Mills ‘I am wholly unamused’ look. He had made the two of them agree to a strict schedule, whereby he still lived with Emma, but saw Regina every afternoon after school and on Saturdays. Emma wonders if Henry had ever spent this much time with her: it was beginning to show in all of these mannerisms that were cute on both mother _and_ son. “I wanted you to answer my question, ma,” Henry answers, taking the proffered Lego pieces and quickly popping it into his mouth.

 

“NO!” Emma shouts, unsure of why her precocious fourth grader was consciously eating Legos. “Don’t—”

 

After a loud crack, Henry smiles and spits the two pieces back out. Except for a small dent in the bigger white piece, the two pieces are whole and separate once more. Emma opens her mouth to remonstrate the kid, but isn’t really sure what to say, so she closes her mouth again.

  
“Mom taught me that,” he says with a wide, toothy grin.

 

And for some reason, Emma desperately wishes she could see Regina popping Legos in her mouth to unstick them for her teary-eyed son. She can also imagine the usually-indifferent woman sitting cross-legged on the carpet with him, building a tall Eiffel tower or a Hobbit village with a precision and patience that Emma seemed to wholly lack.

 

“Does your mom build Legos with you?” Emma finds herself blurting.

 

Henry regards her curiously, but nods enthusiastically. “Yeah, she’s really good at it. We always build them by the instructions first, but once we’re done with that, we mess them all up again and build whatever we want. She’s really good at that.”

 

Regina, building things rather than tearing them down was a nice thought. A more- than-nice thought. It was the kind of thought that made Emma’s heart swell and her stomach lurch, and when it was gone she just felt sick, sick, sick.

 

“You okay, ma?”

  
Emma nods in response, inwardly cursing herself for being so weak. She was so wound up in the woman that literally everything made her trip.

                                           

The strings weren’t attached so much as they were imbedded within Emma, yanking her toward Regina with every step the woman took away from her. They would tighten like a seatbelt pulled too hard, first going rigid and then slowly reeling in with every movement. Sometimes Emma thought Regina felt it, too.

 

Like in those moments where she would forget herself, forget her role, and would linger just a few seconds too long on Emma’s skin, her fingers pausing to feel to remember and to savor rather than just to take.

 

Or in those moments where Regina would tell Emma to sit on the floor in front of her. She would sit behind Emma on the bed and would slowly separate out sections of her hair, her fingers gentle and sure. Sometimes she would comb her fingers through Emma’s hair, her nails gently scratching Emma’s scalp, and it was almost like she enjoyed feeling Emma relax beneath her and hearing Emma’s quiet sighs of contentment.

 

Of course, the resulting braid would generally be used for unspeakable purposes in the bedroom. Emma thinks Regina enjoys it for more than just its utility in bed, though. She likes to think so.

 

She knows that it is probably not so.

 

“Mom’s different now, Ma,” Henry says seriously a few minutes later. He takes the ship that Emma has been working on gently from Emma’s hands and begins taking away pieces and replacing them with care, rolling his eyes good-naturedly with Emma’s mistakes.

 

Emma smiles even though it hurts, “Yeah, she’s really being good now, isn’t she?”

 

Henry scrunches up his face in thought, and Emma feels her heart swell with affection for the kid. “No. I mean yes. But, it’s more than that. When she started trying to be good, she was really sad all the time, like she was doing it but she didn’t really want to. But now, in the past couple of weeks, she seems happy.”

 

The news hits Emma hard in the gut. Maybe she was making a difference with Regina, after all? She wants to know more. She wants to know everything about the woman, even if it’s only through her son’s eyes, but she places her curiosity aside to focus on her son. “And does that make you happy, Henry?”

 

He purses his lips together and pauses for a moment, thinking seriously before nodding his head. “Yeah, it does.” He pauses again, and Emma waits for him to speak. She hears clomping up the stairs in the hallway and knows it can be none other than Mary Margaret. Good. She’s starving.

 

“Maybe the book was wrong, Emma. Maybe she isn’t as evil as it says she is.”

 

The words warm Emma from the inside. Gods, he’s matured so much in the past few months, going from seeing only in black and white and finally realizing that there were also shades of grey. “And do you know why?” Emma asks, hoping he’s realized it by now.

 

Henry’s smile brightens further, “Me!”

 

“That’s right, Henry. You’re the Believer—you just gotta believe in her.” Emma says, using the terminology Henry had drilled into her over and over to get her point across.

 

“And you’re the Savior…maybe…” he pauses, scrunching his nose up in a way so like her own that it makes Emma’s heart soar. “Maybe you gotta save _Mom_ to break the curse!” The light in his eyes is both endearing and unnerving. Once Henry gets an idea in his head, he goes full steam ahead, and Emma can only imagine what his little genius brain would think up.

 

“I wouldn’t go _that_ far…”  

 

“This calls for an Operation!”

 

_Well, shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if the sex didn't live up to your expectations. I've found I'm not really as good at writing it as I am at reading it?


	5. Thawing

“Sheriff Swan speaking,” Emma says through a mouthful of donut. Mary Margaret had allowed her to snag one before she brought a dozen—now an uneven eleven—donuts to the First Friday parent-teacher conference.

 

“Eating _and_ answering the phone. And here I thought you were too simple to multitask.”

 

“Mmm.” Fuck. It was Regina. Emma swallows audibly and winces as the unmasticated mass lodges somewhere in her throat. She quickly tips back a large swig of lukewarm coffee and ekes out a, “What do you want?”

 

“Charming,” Regina responds dryly. She clears her throat in a very uncharacteristic manner. “I am calling because Henry seems to desperately want me to invite you to dinner tonight,” she says tightly, a little too indifferent, her usually gravelly, undulating voice monotone and higher pitched.

 

“Okay.” Emma says, knowing it will tick the woman off. There is a pause on the line, and then a huff from Regina’s end.

 

“Well, Miss Swan?”

 

Emma smirks, an inner demon inside rubbing its hands in childish glee. “Well, Madame Mayor?”

 

“I happen to know that your shift ends at six and that your insufferable roommate has an evening planned with a particular doctor, so, please, Miss Swan, do tell me if you plan on coming to dinner tonight.”

 

The frustration in Regina’s voice is palpable, and Emma can’t help but want to push every last button she could, “You never asked.”

 

Emma hears a muttered, “Idiot” on the line before it goes dead, and she wonders idly whether or not Regina will try to murder her in the near future. Who’s she kidding? She’d probably enjoy it.

 

Her personal cell phone pings with a message.

 

 **R:** Arrive at 6:30 sharp. Beer of the dark ale variety will pair better than wine.

 

It has Emma smiling, because, damn, for a woman so bossy, she found it near impossible to ask for anything.

 

Seeing Henry waiting nervously at the door of his own home was a shock comprised of many, many layers. Her son was there, in front of her willingly, with his backpack hoisted high on his little shoulders and wrapped in the thick blue coat she had just gotten him this winter because suddenly his legs and his arms were just too long.

 

It was less of a shock and more of a slow realization that Henry now no longer considered this his home. The way he knocked on the door rather than bursting in; the way he carefully placed his shoes next to the door rather than throwing them off only to have Regina scold him for it; the way he seemed unsure of whether or not he could still put his backpack in the cabinet or in his bedroom, so he instead chose to keep in on his back, as if he expected he might have to leave at any time.

 

The way he lingered around Regina, like a weak magnet repelled by another. He was _trying_ , Regina could tell, but gone were the days where he would babble to her about school with easy smiles and ready embraces. The thought made Regina wish to curl in on herself, and the thought of doing _that_ made her want to throttle somebody. It’s a rage that she knows will build, a spark in a dry forest, and she can only hope Henry is nowhere near her for the fallout.

 

Her son—her beautiful, loving, pure-hearted son that she had raised from birth—could barely tolerate her. The bitterness and rage that constantly roiled inside her, the same bitterness and rage that always completely melted away when it came to Henry, still was caustic enough to eat away at her relationship with him. To taint the purest relationship she had ever had with another.

 

She can’t necessarily pinpoint when things had changed, but she knows that it certainly started with the Book. She feels a slight amount of shame at how cruelly she had treated Emma when she had first come to Storybrooke, blaming the blonde for the already tainted relationship she had with her son.

 

And still, even through the accusing glares and withheld affection, Regina felt so much for the little boy in front of her. Her heart would expand in her chest, flooding her with the desire to hold him close to her, to protect him, to make the sadness and confusion in his deep brown eyes go away. She wanted to—as crazy as it sounded—wring the life out of the person who caused him so much pain, her instincts clearly not in sync with the reality that it was she who had hurt him.

 

Regina moves artfully around the kitchen, unaware of the interest it garners from two eyes hidden under a mop of brown hair. She opens the refrigerator and closes it, then moves to the cabinets and finally to the pantry. When had she gotten rid of all of his favorite snacks? There were no mozzarella sticks in the cheese drawer and no pretzels in the cabinet to the right of the refrigerator. The hummus in the back of the refrigerator was two months over the expiration date, and was completely hard and browned around the edges. She had made sure not to bring him home on their outings together, not trusting herself to remain strong enough to see him breathe life back into the mansion only to leave it again. She should have remembered to get his favorite things at the grocery when she was there yesterday. If she were a better mother she would have remembered. But, alas.

 

“Is…an apple okay, Henry?” Regina asks, her voice breaking a little. She’s pretty sure he’s stopped eating apples altogether since the Book, but she doesn’t really have anything in the house to offer him except the unopened ingredients for dinner.

 

He pauses, then nods vigorously.

 

“I know you like them cold and with strawberries and blueberries, but I haven’t really done much shopping lately…” she trails off as she bends down to acquire a cutting board. She chops the apple in silence, the dull clack of the knife hitting the wood as she scored the apple into bite-sized pieces echoing in the cavernous house. She offers her son the snack with a watery smile, spooning a small amount of honey onto the plate before turning away quickly to wipe away an errant tear.

 

The crunch-hiss of teeth biting into apple is more muted than the clack of the knife, but is no less loud for it. “Hey mom?” Henry asks.

 

Regina’s heart soars at the one syllable word, and she knows that her face is revealing all of her love and affection for the boy as she turns to look at him again. It often scares her to realize just how much she loves her son and just how much that is at war with every one of her instincts. Her instincts tell her to bend Henry—to crush him—and make him hers and hers alone. But her love for him and her vast experiences failing in love tell her to let him find her on his own.

 

“Yes?”

 

“Thank you,” Henry says slightly bashfully but with his characteristic lopsided grin. He nods down at the afternoon snack, but the glint in his eyes make Regina think that he is thanking her for so much more.

 

“What has you smiling so much after work, Emma?” Mary Margaret asks as Emma bursts in. Emma only has fifteen minutes in which to shower, change and make it back to her car so that she can make it to Regina’s house on time.

 

“Nothing—just a good day at work,” Emma calls, already halfway up the stairs to her room. She rummages through her closet to find the outfit she had picked out as she was counting down the minutes for her shift to end. She finds the forest green silk blouse behind her underwear in the top drawer of her dresser, finds a pair of black heels that she’s pretty sure she hasn’t worn since she got to Storybrooke in the back of her closet and plucks out last week’s dark wash jeans from the hamper, laying them all out on the bed before stripping down and streaking to the shower.

 

She gets to Mifflin at exactly 6:28 and is pretty proud of herself even though her hair is still a bit wet and she’s pretty sure the eyeliner on her right eyelid is thicker than the eyeliner on her left one. She walks up the drive, expensive-as-fuck Belgian ale clutched in her right hand, and raps on the door in a loud tattoo.

 

“Ma!” Henry greets almost instantaneously. He gives Emma a once-over and calls up the stairs, ostensibly to his other mother. “It’s okay, mom! She’s all dressed up, too.”

 

“Henry, gentlemen don’t shout in the house, dear,” Regina remonstrates, appearing at the top of the stairs and gracefully making her way down.

 

Emma’s brain almost short-circuits.

 

The devastating woman was wearing a black dress with a conservative hemline but that hugged every inch of her delicious body. It had a zipper going down the length of the front and a straight neckline that showed just a hint of her breasts.

 

 _Hubba hubba_.

 

Emma’s admiration was only compounded by the fact that in the entire three weeks she had been fucking the woman almost daily, she hadn’t been allowed to touch her once. No kisses, no ass-squeezes, no making the woman come undone with her tongue. She was half convinced that Regina was doing it drive her legitimately insane, thereby ridding herself of Emma once and for all. Regina Mills _was_ known to be queen of The Long Game.

 

“Um, hi,” Emma stumbles out, thrusting out her beer as an offering and as an excuse to look anywhere but the woman intent upon frying each and every one of her precious few brain cells.

 

“Trappistes Rochefort 8,” Regina says, pronouncing the name of the beer perfectly, because _of course_ she would. “I’m impressed, Sheriff.”

 

And, gods, did she just lower her voice like that on purpose? And did she have some sort of magical connection to Emma’s ladyparts, which had a tendency to translate any and all Regina Mills correspondence into immediate, palpable desire?

 

Fuck her smart-as-all-hell son for putting Regina up to this dinner. And fuck Regina for wearing that sexy dress and using that suggestive, dangerous voice and for having that hair and those eyes that alluded to sex and that ass that haunted Emma every time she closed her eyes even for a second.

 

Yeah, Emma was toast. Turned up to level seven and forgotten, black and crumbly toast.

 

To say dinner was awkward was an understatement.

 

It was Mr. and Mrs. Smith pot roast dinner awkward, full of an indescribable tension that Emma chalks up to novelty and Regina decides is a testament to how far they had not come in the past few months.

 

“So, moms,” Henry started, breaking the silence that had previously only been cut (literally and figuratively) by the sound of knives scraping against plates. “I’ve called us here today to celebrate.” He pauses dramatically for a moment, then turns to his brunette mother. “Mom, you’ve been really trying hard to be good, and I think you’re really on your way to becoming a good guy.”

 

Regina smiles gratefully at her son, her dark eyes filling up with tears at the acknowledgement. Henry even grabs her hand and squeezes it, the perfect, darling boy, and Emma has never been prouder of her son than in this moment.

 

“So I think it’s time for phase two: reintegration,” Henry continues after a moment.

 

“Reintegration?” Emma asks. Should Henry even know a word like ‘reintegration’ at age ten? About that Emma isn’t sure exactly, but she sure knows that she’s got the smartest kid in all of Storybrooke.

 

“Reintegration,” Henry repeats with a sharp nod of his head that flops his brown hair over his eyes. “And you can start by coaching my soccer team with ma.”

 

The two women protest at the same time.

 

“I can’t coach a soccer team!”  
  
“Regina doesn’t even know the first thing about soccer!”

 

Regina turns sharply to Emma. “Since when do you know which sports I am knowledgeable about, Miss Swan?”

 

“I don’t—well, _do_ you know how to play soccer?”

 

“That’s besides the point,” Regina shoots back, crossing her arms and pursing her lips, one eyebrow skyward. “I was challenging the fact that you _presumed to know_ my knowledge of the sport, not that I actually knew it.”

 

“MOMS!”

 

Both women turn to their son, whom they had momentarily forgotten. “The point is, mom needs some more visibility in Storybrooke. Scratch some backs, shake some hands. What better way than to coach the first kids’ soccer league?”

 

Sometimes, their kid was way too precocious for his own good.

 

“You just went from saying ‘team’ to ‘league,’ young man.” Regina chastises, suddenly feeling that she was way over her head.

 

“Oh, did I?” Henry asks rhetorically with a cheeky, disarming smile. Emma wasn’t fooled, but Regina was putty instantaneously. “Since we don’t have anyone to play, I figured we could have small teams of four or five and play each other, you know?” He flashes another disarming smile at his brunette mother, whose adoring expression pretty much solidified her participation in their son’s scheme.

 

“Okay, okay, kid. We’re in, right?” Emma says, shooting a look at Regina, who nods somewhat reluctantly. “But we’re not promising this will last very long.”

 

After the too-awkward dinner, Emma lingers at the door, wanting desperately to stay but knowing that her son needed to get to bed on time and that Regina probably never wants to see her again. It had felt almost like a disastrous date, and Emma is suddenly seized with the urge to kiss Regina on the threshold of the woman’s home.

 

Instead, Regina whispers, “I expect you in my bed by eleven,” while Henry is bent down tying his shoelace, and suddenly Emma thinks that maybe it hadn’t been so unsuccessful a date after all.

 

When Emma arrives back at Mifflin after having tucked her son in at the Loft and snuck back out again, she almost drools at the sight of Regina sitting in the chair by her bed, still wearing her dress and heels and armed with a thick black riding crop.

 

Her eyes are dark, unfocused and hungry, the faint smirk on her lips belied by the slight shake of her hands. Again, Emma is seized with the desire to kiss the woman, but she knows that isn’t allowed.

 

“Strip. Then on your knees, Miss Swan.” Regina punctuates Emma’s name with a light smack of the leather against her palm, the sound promising Emma’s rapidly dampening cunt a twisted night of pain and pleasure.

 

Emma follows Regina’s instructions wordlessly, climbing naked atop the bed on her knees and bowing her back just as she knew Regina liked it. She hears a satisfied sound from Regina behind her, and it flows right to her clenching core.

 

“Eager as always, Miss Swan,” Regina comments, slowly running the flat of the leather crop up the back of Emma’s right thigh. Emma shudders as it reaches her core and sighs in disappointment when it leaves to slide up her left thigh. “Impatient as always, too.”

 

Emma gasps as she receives a hard smack to the place where her thigh just meets her ass. It stings, but Emma knows it’s only beginning. Regina lands two blows in quick succession on Emma’s ass, the strikes hard enough to make tears well up in Emma’s eyes and a low whimper to rumble past her lips. Her mind idly marvels at how they’ve gotten to this moment from Regina virtually throwing herself at Emma just a couple of months ago.

 

Regina chuckles darkly at the blonde’s reaction, jolting Emma back to the present, her blunt nails scraping over the tender flesh of Emma’s ass before they pry her cheeks apart, bearing all of Emma to her ravenous gaze. She pauses for a moment, and Emma wishes she could see Regina’s face to gauge what she was thinking. She would occasionally do that—pause during their fierce sex to just _look_ , and Emma was never allowed to see her face.

 

The moment over, Regina begins sliding the leather tip of the riding crop over Emma’s sex, smearing it with Emma’s copious arousal. That Regina could see how unbelievably wet she was for her only made Emma’s cunt drip more, the liquid sliding obscenely down her thigh. Regina smacks her once, twice, with the crop on her cunt, the blows more muted not because Regina wanted to take it any easier on the woman, but rather because the angle allowed for nothing more.

 

Frustrated, Regina lands another three fast, hard blows on Emma’s ass cheeks, the pain knocking the breath right out of the prone blonde. Before she’s even recovered, Regina begins smearing her juices with the thick leather base of the crop, Emma realizing the woman’s intent just before she is shoved full of it. She cries out, the hard, unyielding crop feeling foreign in her body. Regina pulls it out in a corkscrew motion and immediately begins sliding it up from her cunt to her asshole.

 

Emma’s entire body freezes, and she is rewarded with a painful, wet smack to a spot still smarting. When Regina brings the base of the crop back to her ass, Emma makes sure to keep her body as relaxed as possible. Her fingers scrabble at the sheets, dislodging the fitted one as she struggles to deal with the unexpected onslaught of sensations.

 

“Regina,” Emma pants out, and the brunette swiftly removes the crop, leaving a space that now begged to be filled again. She wishes Regina would use her fingers. Gods, she longs to have Regina inside her—but Regina had always been careful never to touch Emma intimately herself. Emma can only weep wondering how amazing their sex could be if they would actually touch one another. “Regina, please,” Emma half-sobs, her ass stinging in the cool air and her body _begging_ for release.

 

Regina grabs Emma’s ponytail and forces her back to arch just as she liked it, letting out a small whimper of pleasure at the cry of surprise Emma releases. It might be small, but Emma loves hearing the muted noises that fall from Regina’s lips, the sounds all the more arousing because Emma knows Regina doesn’t mean to release them.

 

She bends forward, her fist pulling Emma’s head back to meet her halfway. “You may find your release now.” She lets go of Emma’s ponytail without warning, Emma’s head slamming down into the soft pillows.

 

She pushes two fingers into her sopping cunt and slowly drags them up to her clit, making sure to take her time because she knows Regina is watching every last bit of it. Her ass bobs up and down as she begins stroking her clit wantonly, her moans now unfettered and growing louder by the second. She imagines it’s Regina’s fingers stroking through her damp folds and it’s Regina’s hand on her left breast. She dips her thumb into her cunt and slowly drags it up the distance to her ass, desperate to relive the feeling of Regina entering her there.

 

She is pleasantly surprised at the long, unencumbered moan Regina releases at the sight. She releases one of her own as she hears the rustle of fabric behind her and feels the unmistakable grip of two hands on her hips. She feels the roughness of cropped pubic hair against her skin and the rougher tug of her hips being pulled backwards to slot her ass against Regina’s bare crotch.

 

This was new. This was—

 

Emma is unashamed of the whimper that flies past her lips as she feels the slick, sticky heat of Regina’s wetness against her ass. The way she smears her essence over Emma is nothing short of possessive, and has whatever is left of coherent thought in Emma totally and blissfully gone.

 

“Keep touching yourself,” Regina growls in Emma’s ear, and Emma is all too happy to comply as her hips find a jerky rhythm with Regina’s own. They continue, Emma flicking her own clit and Regina grinding against Emma’s ass until Regina comes with a shuddering moan, her hands tightening around Emma’s hips and pulling her impossibly closer, her harsh pants hot against the outside of Emma’s ear.

 

It sends Emma tumbling over the edge, her hips thrusting downwards even as Regina’s death grip on them remained.

 

It takes a few moments for the two women to catch their breaths. They lay limp, Regina almost spooning Emma for two long, glorious minutes, until Regina finds the strength to utter, “You may leave now, Miss Swan.”

 

The words hurt less than they usually do, because Emma can tell that something important has shifted with them. Emma had never been allowed to feel Regina; and Regina had never allowed herself to touch Emma like that. And they had never—ever—continued touching each other after their releases.

 

Emma walked home bundled up against the cold winter night, Regina’s essence still lingering on her skin and a goofy grin plastered to her face.


	6. A Glimpse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emma and Regina try coparenting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a bit of a short chapter, but more will be hopefully coming soon!

Emma and Regina last all of fifteen minutes into the tryouts before almost incinerating one another (metaphorically, that is).

 

“The children need to learn the mechanics of the game, _Sheriff Swan_ ,” Regina bites the name out, barely holding onto civility in the midst of twenty wide-eyed gradeschoolers.

 

“If we just give them a ball,” Emma starts, and all twenty gazes shift to her. “We can easily see which of the punks have motor skills and which ones are duds,” Emma retorts, rolling the ball at one kid and smiling as she kicked it with reactionary gusto. The ball sails across the field and lands in the taller grass with a soft thud. Emma smiles in triumph.

 

“Now how many of you have ever played soccer before? Raise your hands, please,” Regina asks the assembled children.

 

Everybody just blinks.

 

“Have any of you seen a soccer game?”

 

Again, nobody raises a hand. One kid drops to his knees and begins scooting along the freshly-mowed grass, a frog hopping just out of his reach. Regina contemplates calling him to order, but thinks better of it in light of her argument with the dense Sheriff. “See, Miss Swan?”

 

“I _know_ they don’t know how to play, Regina, I just thought—”

 

A couple of the older kids assembled around Henry sigh and roll their eyes in tandem with him. “Moms! We just wanna play soccer,” Henry says slowly, waving a hand back and forth in an attempt to break the tension between the two women, who had positioned themselves a hairsbreadth away from one another in the midst of their argument.

 

Regina moves away first, flustered by the sheer number of witnesses to her unraveling and by the blonde’s proximity. “Yes, Henry. Of course.” Regina shoots a glance at Emma and continues, “Half of you—this half, yes—come with me. We—” Regina begins pointing to children, counting to ten in her head. “Are going to learn how the game works. The other half of you—no, not you, yes you— _come back here and leave that frog alone!_ —please follow Miss Swan. We’ll switch off in a bit.”

 

The soccer practice proceeded with minimal misfortune. One kid’s not-so-loose tooth was konked out of his mouth in an impressive spray of bloody glory when a rogue ball hit him straight in the face. One girl went for the kick to end all kicks only to miss the ball entirely and find the ground instead. No police escorts to the hospital had to be called, however, so there was that.

 

The two women managed to sort the children into teams of relatively equal ability with minimal complaints from all concerned parties.

 

All in all, it was a good afternoon. Henry—poor, uncoordinated Henry—was smiling and happy, glancing between his two mothers in a way that conveyed a mature sense of pride. Emma was decidedly in her element teaching the kids footwork by having them run straight at her with the ball. And Regina was allowed to be in charge of the whistle, something she took to like a cat to a couch.

 

“Whew, moms! That was something!” Henry exclaims, flopping down in the backseat of Regina’s car. Emma is standing just outside the Benz and leaning over the open window. “Mom, can we have pizza?” he asks hopefully.

 

“Henry—you know pizza is only on First Fridays.”

 

“But mom—”

 

“But Regina—”

 

“And who said you have a dog in this fight, Miss Swan?”

 

“My stomach.”

 

Regina regards Emma for a moment, stony-faced and certainly not fighting a smile. “Well we can’t have our Assistant Coach starving now, can we?” Regina says offhandedly. “Get in the car.”

 

Emma smiles widely, and Regina forgets to breathe for a few long seconds. “Yes, ma’am!”

 

As the Benz is making its careful way to Mifflin (Regina is a stickler for speed limits), Emma suddenly exclaims, “Wait a second!”

 

It has Regina slamming on the brakes and looking around wildly for pedestrians or rogue kittens.

 

“ _Assistant_ Coach?!”

 

In all fairness, Regina _was_ the one with the whistle.

 

She was also the one with the riding crop.

 

The two of them had continued their arrangement while simultaneously running a mini-soccer league, operating as co-workers and raising a son together. People were starting to talk, and, of course, Emma’s roommate was the first one to start asking questions.  
  
“So, Emma…” Mary Margaret says carefully, smiling tightly over her mug of morning tea. “Did you have a nice night last night?”

 

Emma nods and smiles tightly back, snatching a couple of pancakes from the plate next to the stovetop and biting into them with gusto. She hadn’t eaten since one the previous afternoon because _someone_ didn’t think it was prudent to stop activities for a midnight snack. That same someone who definitely had an unopened container of Ben  & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia sitting behind frozen peas in her freezer, despite several denials and one not-uncertain threat. Who keeps ice cream in the freezer without immediately taking a spoon to it, anyway?

 

A heathen, that’s who.

 

“How are you doing, MM?” Emma asks, debating whether to get a glass of milk or just drink it straight from the jug.

 

“Me? Oh, just fine,” she answers with a smile that lasts just a bit too long. Emma can tell it’s tight and forced and she wonders—

 

“How was that date the other night?” Emma asks, opting for a glass when Mary Margaret’s wide, aghast eyes told her she wouldn’t be able to get by with just the jug.

 

Mary Margaret doesn’t quite have to say something for Emma to know that it didn’t go well. She was still pining after the coma man, it seemed. Mary Margaret had told her about him one night a few months ago after they had had one too many glasses of wine: she had begun visiting him in the hospital when she would take her students for their biweekly visit. He had been so alone, and she had just felt drawn to him. Nobody knew who he was, and thus he never had any visitors. MM had taken upon herself to stay with him. To talk to him and read to him. And Emma understood—she understood falling for someone impossible, and gave MM a sympathetic smile she hopes the woman would understand.

 

Emma has found herself falling into the mayor, settling into places she wouldn’t have even dreamed herself occupying before.

 

She’s in the mayor’s phone now as just “Emma,” which Emma might have done herself, but that Regina certainly hadn’t changed in almost two weeks. She’s now earned a regular place at dinner, eating with the Mills much more often now than she ever dined with Mary Margaret or at Granny’s. She’s carved out a place in Regina’s room as well. It’s the top left drawer in Regina’s vanity, and it’s where Emma always keeps an extra set of clothes and her toothbrush. She’s been staying later and later into the mornings, grumbling about the bitter Maine winter and the utter warmth of Regina’s bed. Emma never asked Regina whether or not she could use the drawer, and, again, Regina had never removed her things or mentioned anything about it, so she persists in using it.

 

Emma decides that she probably should also carve out a space for herself in the refrigerator as well. If she has her own food, maybe Regina will be more empathetic to Emma’s poor stomach; plus, Emma feels a great deal of satisfaction from slowly invading into the nooks and crannies of Regina’s existence. It seems so deliciously appropriate, seeing how the woman had tried so furiously to run Emma out of town when she first arrived all those months ago.

 

“Emma?” Mary Margaret asks, breaking Emma out of her reverie. “Do you want some syrup? Or some butter? Or maybe just a plate?”

 

Emma shakes her head no, ignoring Mary Margaret’s attempts to make Emma adhere to a modicum of propriety and instead grabbing another pancake as she does so. Regina makes pancakes, too, occasionally when Henry asks. They’re fluffy and perfect, usually pockmarked with blueberries and topped with the best maple syrup Emma had ever tasted.

 

“Sit down, Emma! Relax,” Mary Margaret admonishes, pushing out the seat at the table next to her.

 

“Does this not look relaxed to you?” Emma asks, a twinkle in her eye. She pats her stomach and slumps backwards against the counter, reaching for a mug that is still drying on the rack.

 

Mary Margaret smiles affectionately at her, and Emma feels so warm and safe and _happy_ for the first time that she can really ever remember. Things had settled into a new normal in Storybrooke, settling into place like ocean sand after a rough storm.

 

“Ruby and I are going out for drinks tonight. Are you in?” Mary Margaret queries. “Just girls tonight,” she adds quickly, knowing it will sway Emma’s opinion.

 

Emma nods her assent, wondering if she should ask Regina to join them. Yes, Regina hated Snow’s guts, but it would help to ‘reintegrate’ the woman more into the community, she supposes. Gods, life really was good.

 

She has a job. She has friends. A son. A woman she…shares increasingly intimate sexual encounters with. Life in Storybrooke might just be the best thing to ever happen to Emma Swan.


	7. Vulnerability

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some domesticity and vulnerability for our two leading ladies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I accidentally published last chapter AND this chapter in this chapter. I edited it out. Sorry for the mix-up. My head still isn't quite screwed on straight with the delightful emotional rollercoaster that is my life currently. I wouldn't wish this shit on my worst enemy.

The sun is deceptively bright for such a cold morning, and Emma curses the town’s lack of a proper gym. Running was one of the ways she processed things, and it was far too cold for anything beyond stiff joints and painful gulps of biting air. The pull-up bar and punching bag she installed in the Sheriff station help somewhat during the long winter months, and it’s with a long, low grunt that she ekes out her thirtieth pull-up on the creaking bar.

 

Her arms are screaming and she drops unceremoniously to the floor with a loud puff of breath. She can feel sweat beading on her back and sliding down the long curve of her spine.

 

Regina had not come out to the bar with her the previous night. Her words were, if she remembers correctly, “ _I would rather be stuck in a closet with an inebriated Leroy for a week_.” And that was fine—Emma hadn’t really expected any enthusiasm from Regina anyway. What Emma didn’t quite expect was how her mind seemed singularly focused on the entrancing woman back at 108 Mifflin the entire night. Even amid the healthy throng of patrons, the jovial company of two good friends and healthy doses of alcohol, Emma felt removed as if she had left all the good parts of her back across town with her son and…lover? Was that the appropriate term for what she and Regina were? It felt like so much more, and yet, in reality they were nothing to each other. Two women unfortunately tethered by a mutual son and a slowly cooling hatred.

 

The soft pull of the hand tape feels grounding as Emma rounds in on the standing punching bag she had painstakingly weighted down with sand. She sizes her opponent up, narrowing her eyes at his lifeless pale face before going for a quick jab at his cheek. She keeps her weight pulled back, diving into the bag and quickly moving her hands back up to shield herself.

 

If only she knew what Regina were thinking. If only she could be sure Regina felt the same gripping desire to be around her constantly. The same fascination with her myriad facial expressions and the innumerable ones she tried to hide. An insane preoccupation with her happiness.

 

Her fists connect with his face and his chest in quick succession before she slows down to give him a more calculated, measured treatment. He lunges right and she weaves left, her weight heavy on her back right leg, which she swings upward to land squarely on his chest. The entire bag leans back dangerously, and Emma quickly moves forward to steady it and miscalculates the proximity of her own feet to the bag’s eventual landing place.

 

The series of events that happen next really can only be related with any accuracy by a laughing Regina, because Emma was far too distracted by pain to register much of any of it.

 

_The bag swings back and Emma lunges forward, her arms snaking out to grab ahold of the teetering bag. The bag slams down on the toes of both her bare feet, the pain causing Emma to curl forward with a yelp, her head hitting the bag’s chest before her arms push it back away from her. In her scramble to move her feet away, the blonde trips, her legs tangling in one another before sending her crashing to the ground, the bag falling a slow descent atop her._

 

“You’re an idiot,” Regina chastises her as she rolls the bag from off Emma’s curled body. Emma is too focused on the pain radiating from her feet and trying not to cry in front of the woman she’s been fucking to even think of responding. Regina lightly runs her fingers over the offending toes on her left foot, her head shaking slowly from side to side as she does so. “They don’t seem to be broken. Can you walk, Sheriff?”

 

Regina stands, offering a hand to the huffing woman on the floor. Emma takes it and pulls herself up, careful not to put any pressure on the front part of her feet. She lets out a low groan—it still hurt regardless—but manages to hobble out to Regina’s Mercedes on the heels of her feet looking somewhat like a penguin.

 

“Where are you taking me?”

 

Regina shoots Emma a look that says, ‘Are you a complete moron?’’ and rolls her eyes in lieu of responding. She takes a turn Emma is all too familiar with and soon they are in the driveway of 108 Mifflin. Regina helps her out of the car and fusses in a rather huffy sort of way until Emma has her feet elevated and her toes encased in a thick layer of towel and ice.

 

“How long were you there, anyway?” Emma asks, now firmly ensconced in the couch with a blanket and a bowl of popcorn one particularly pouty bottom lip earned her.

 

“Hm?” Regina asks absently as she putters around the living room. She’s not really doing much of anything, per se, just sort of straightening things and folding things and moving things to different locations. She doesn’t do this very often, but Emma knows that when she does that she is trying to avoid something.

 

_Emma huffs audibly from her position face-down in Regina’s bed. Her torso is bare against the cool air of Regina’s bedroom, and her bottom half draped only in a sheet. She feels heavy and sated, like she has something warm and fuzzy lining her leaden veins, and all she wants is for all the shuffling and banging to stop and to have Regina’s soft skin settling next to hers._

_Emma huffs again, louder this time, and the sounds continue. It’s the scrape of furniture against carpet and the rustle of fabric, the sharp squeak of the en suite bathroom door opening and the hiss of the wooden walk-in closet door scraping against the soft carpet._

_Emma huffs impossibly louder, ending her huff with something that sounds between a growl and a groan._

_“Yes, Miss Swan?” Regina asks tightly, her voice appearing somewhere over Emma’s left shoulder._

_“You’re avoiding something.”_

_“I most certainly—”_

_“Can you just get to it so you can get back in bed?” Emma deigns to crane her neck up so that she can flash Regina what she hopes is a disarming smile. She sees something not quite affection and not quite confliction flash through the brunette’s eyes. It’s something she’s seen more and more often in the woman, but she has yet to quite place it. It tugs at her chest regardless, and Emma steels herself against it._

_She feels the bed bend down by her waist and knows Regina has sat down. The older woman releases a long, hard breath. This was going to be important—Emma could tell. Emma shifts so that she is lying on her back, the sheet not quite covering her breasts as she bends an arm behind her head to regard the woman before her. Regina is staring at the ground intensely, her arms draped in purple silk stretched out behind her and the loosely tied robe is sliding down her right shoulder, baring a long and tantalizing stretch of collarbone not unlike the first night Regina had come to her._

_“Are you sleeping with anyone else?” Regina asks, her voice nonchalant and altogether dismissive, the tone belied by her rigid posture and previous puttering._

_“I—wait. What?”_

_“Did I stutter, Miss Swan?”_

_“No. I just…uh,” Emma pushes out ungracefully. Her heart is beating rapidly, surging with an unfamiliar lightness. She blinks a few times as her mouth struggles to form some semblance of words. “No,” she draws out slowly. Carefully. “Storybrooke doesn’t exactly have many options in that regard.”_

_Regina’s lips purse and then turn down. “You seemed to find Graham rather quickly,” Regina grinds out, the words edged with another something Emma couldn't quite place. They angered her nonetheless._

_Emma had never quite been able to prove that Regina had anything to do with the former Sheriff’s death, but it still weighed heavily on her from time to time. She couldn’t help but feel responsible. “Yeah, funny how as soon as that happened_ he died _.” Emma doesn’t even try to keep the bitterness and regret out of her voice._

_The mattress doesn’t creak as Regina swiftly arises from the bed, fire in her eyes. Emma can almost see it there, swirling hotly beyond her deep russet orbs. Emma curses the fact that she’s still unclothed—curses the fact that this woman is positively impossible and curses the fact that she is seized with an awful desire to kiss her. Regina still hasn’t allowed her anywhere near her lips, and Emma is relatively sure she only does it to drive Emma insane with want._

_“Gods, Regina!” Emma shouts, her voice rising despite her inner voice telling her to remain calm. Another part of her laughs at the rational part because Emma is never calm around Regina._

_Emma stands up, the sheet falling away from her lean body. She smirks as she catches Regina’s eyes raking over her form, but the smirk quickly turns into a scowl as she stomps around the room to her scattered clothing. She can feel Regina’s eyes burning into her as she searches fruitlessly for her bra, so she instead throws on her tee shirt without one._

_Mostly clothed, Emma rounds in on Regina again. “Why do you need to know, anyway?”_

_Regina averts her eyes, her jaw twitching as she fights to keep her face impassive. Emma hates that Regina is always hiding her emotions like that, and has made it a sort of mission to read even the expressions beyond what Regina chooses to show._

_“It’s…unclean,” Regina says, her breath a little shaky, the words not as rigid as she would like them to be. Her arms are crossed around her torso and she looks decidedly vulnerable. Regina Mills._ Vulnerable _._

_A wave of realization crashes over Emma, her eyes, green in the dim light, widen and she feels all of her anger and indignation release from her as she exhales softly. “Oh. Uh, I can…you know, only do this with you. For the purpose of…not catching things?” Emma says, dazed. She knows there is more to it, but she is simply happy that Regina wants this._

_“Hm. That will work, I suppose.”_

_Emma doesn’t point out that Regina was the one who propositioned exclusivity to begin with. She’s on thin ice, and she might as well enjoy skating while she can. “We_ do _have pretty great sex, huh?” Emma asks with a wide grin. Her eyes travel down to Regina’s exposed skin and she looks longingly toward the woman’s large, warm bed._

_“You satisfy me,” Regina says dismissively, her arms dropping from her torso and her back straightening once more._

_And Emma Swan can’t help but feel proud that she can satisfy the fickle, demanding Mayor._

Emma is brought back to the present by the loud bang of the front door opening and the hard patter of small feet against marble.

 

“Henry!” Regina exclaims warmly, her eyes and face softening into the curves of deep, deep love.

 

“Kid!” Emma shouts from her position on the couch.

 

“Ma, are you okay?” Henry asks, running past his brunette mother in favor of the one on the sofa. Emma notices the lightening bolt of hurt that flashes so brightly across Regina’s face but that also vanishes in an instant.

 

“Yeah. I was…hit by a guy and fell over,” Emma says carefully.

  
“Did you get him back?” Henry asks, his face darkening not unlike his adoptive mother’s.

 

Regina snorts, and Henry finally takes note of her. “What your mother meant to say was that she got bested by her own punching bag.”

 

Henry rounds on Emma again, questions clouding his eyes.

 

Emma glares at Regina and sighs. “Yeah, yeah. It sounded better the other way.”

 

Henry’s concern morphs into immediate skepticism. “You got hurt by a _punching bag_.” He looks from his birth mother to his adoptive mother, trying to ascertain if they are telling him the truth.

 

Regina’s slow, wide smirk is all Henry needs to believe them. “Ma,” Henry sighs, “You’re an idiot.”

 

Both son and mother share a look and a smile at her expense, but Emma can’t find it in herself to care. She’s smiling, too, a swell of affection for the two of them bursting in her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had this entire thing written, but now I keep finding it needs more and more scenes to truly flesh out all that is happening. The next chapter will have some more of Regina's healing process and point of view, as we've mostly had Emma up until now.


	8. Runoff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The curse is weakening, and Regina sees her resolve start to crumble.

She felt the change before she was even really cognizant of it. It was a subtle shift of her daily routine: Archie was coming from the opposite side of Main street; Ruby was nowhere to be found in Granny’s; Mary Margaret’s doe eyes dared to meet hers with a sure smile. When she arrived at the office that morning she found she was slightly warm in her winter coat and hung it up in her office closet with the intention of not wearing it home that evening.

 

As she opens her planner for the day, she does not feel the instant flush of satisfaction at the neat handwriting and perfectly ordered day. In the stolid quietude of her office she hears a persistent ticking. Again, she wasn’t quite cognizant of it for some time. She only feels a deep unsettling and unordinary distraction as she attempts to diplomatically decline yet another proposal for a town Renaissance festival. She feels like she wants to move but isn’t sure where she wants to go. Like there is something she should be doing…

 

The minutes tick by in discomfort, and it is only when the minute hand of the clock on her wall makes its final pull toward the number twelve does Regina feel the hard, settling clunk that coincides just a beat off from it.

 

Her breath catches in her throat as she races toward her office window, her hands settling anxiously on the small protrusion of wall just below the glass.

 

There.

 

 _It’s happening_. The words play over and over in her mind, removed from all feeling but tumbling faster and faster in a sort of a whirling dervish.

 

The hands on the clock tower had moved. Regina is empty now, but knows the rage will soon follow and waits for it to claw its way out of the emptiness. She had been foolish to think that she could fight it, that she could maintain the status quo in the face of a woman who violently stirred the delicate atmosphere of a room every time she stepped into the room.

 

A thin bird settles on a tree branch just outside the window, a pink, wriggling worm dangling from its yellow-orange beak. The ground must now be soft enough that the worms had finally been released from their winter stasis and for birds thinned from winter to plunge their sharp beaks into the ground. The pockets of her lungs felt stuffed with the thick air of the city hall heating, suddenly too warm where it was once a comfort.

 

“Mayor Mills?” a voice crackles through the room, far away and tinny.

 

It jolts Regina from her position at the sill, and she moves to her phone with long, purposeful strides.

 

“Yes?” Regina barks perhaps too sharply in the desire that her voice sound sure and steady.

 

“Your nine am is here. Should I send him in?”

 

“Yes. Yes, of course,” Regina says absently, lifting her finger from the phone’s button and hearing the connection sever with the slight pop of sound becoming silence.

 

The door opens and Regina straightens at her desk, summoning up the composure of a queen, but the grace hardens into something more rigid and fragile as she sees who her appointment is.

 

“Gold,” Regina growls. “Come here to gloat, I suppose?”

 

“Well actually, dearie, I came here to discuss zoning with you.” He punctuates the words with a smile filled with pointed, poignant teeth. The sharp tap of his cane against the marble grates against Regina’s ears and she has the petulant urge to kick it out from under him. He produces a large map from the shoulder knapsack Regina had not noticed him wearing earlier. He spreads the map out on her empty desk, his hands smoothing caressingly over the creases in a manner that made Regina feel decidedly uncomfortable. “I would like to petition to change the zoning in this section,” he says, pointing to a commercial zone just north of the docks. “To residential.”

 

Regina stares long at the map before her, her brain slogging through the mire that was her entire world reforming. Why would Gold want to rezone a large, empty industrial lot for a town that never changes? It didn’t make any sense. Unless… Regina felt the weight of the clock tower looming behind her.

 

Was Gold…expecting a population rise in Storybrooke? She thinks back to when Gold could have possibly made this appointment with her. She usually had people schedule for at least a week out, if not more…

 

Had Gold known the curse was going to weaken?

 

She smiles lightly through her anger, latching onto it as it fizzes within her. It was something familiar, and certainly better than that crushing emptiness that had preceded it. “Can it be fixed?” Regina grinds out, hating that she has to rely on such an insufferable man.

 

“Oh, of course, dearie!” he says brightly, snapping his fingers. “I just need access to magic in this land without magic,” he says breezily, mockingly. He pauses then lifts one finger, cocking his head eerily to the side not unlike Rumplestiltskin would do. Regina wonders idly if the weakening of the curse had anything to do with it.

 

“And the heart of the thing you love most,” he finishes, his sharp eyes drinking in the horror slowly dawning on Regina’s face.

 

 _Henry_. She sees visions of Henry’s face contorted in betrayal, of Henry’s face contorted in pain as she plunges her hand into his chest and wraps her fingers around his heart and yanks. Of Henry’s pale and lifeless little body, the strong fire of his eyes and toothy grin stifled forever. The thought sends a choking, clawing pain through Regina, making words and breath and life impossible.

 

“Tick, tock, _your majesty_ ,” Gold sing-songs, his eyes glinting gleefully.

 

“No. Never,” Regina answers lowly, her voice thick with an emotion she wishes she could hide from the manipulative man before her.

 

“Very well then.” Gold stands. “Here is my proposal. I trust you will introduce this at the next meeting?”

 

Regina grits her teeth, a low growl rumbling harsh but quiet in her throat. “Of course.” She stands, her hands planted firmly on the solid wood of her desk because they would have otherwise been shaking.

 

The loud clack of Gold’s cane releases the tight clenching of Regina’s chest slightly with every move it takes away from her. Just as Gold has his hand on the door, he pauses and turns. “Oh, by the way. Have you heard the news? Our poor John Doe has woken up, and for some reason he thinks he’s Prince Charming.”

 

A slow smile spreads across his face when he hears the sound of breaking glass hitting the closed door behind him. Her rage fizzes over his skin, and he feels the magic inside him rear up to meet it.

 

 

 

Emma could feel the subtle pivot of winter in the air. Though it was still a cool 45 degrees, she could feel the energy of spring pushing away the cold. She can almost feel the soft play of wind against her bare shoulders and smell the sweet scent of awakening flowers. There would be the Game of Thorns Flower Festival in April and the trips to the beach with Henry. Maybe midnight picnics with Regina by the beach…

 

Emma shrugs on her red leather jacket and bounds down the stairs to the loft, almost crashing into Mary Margaret on the way.

 

“Oops,” Emma apologizes with a smile before a frown overtakes her features. “Wait. What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?”

 

Her roommate’s eyes are sparkling with tears and puffy from what looked to be hours of crying. Emma feels her euphoria sink, and she places an awkward hand on her friend’s shoulder to guide her to the couch. As the couch squeaks underneath them, Mary Margaret launches herself into Emma, who releases a light squeak as the tiny woman grips onto her shirt and sobs.

 

“Uh.” Emma is panicking, her mind searching for things to say and her body frozen at the physical contact. Going through so many foster homes as a child, she had never had the chance to really make any friends. The one friend she did make had betrayed her, anyway. So this—comforting someone, feeling the disquietude of empathy, feeling the strong surge of protectiveness leap out of her chest—was utterly foreign to her.

 

“Is everything okay?” Emma asks, wincing at her own words. Obviously things _weren’t_ okay—she just wasn’t sure how to ask what _wasn’t_ okay.

 

“He’s awake,” Mary Margaret snuffles into her collar. “He’s awake,” she repeats.

 

Emma tries to inch herself toward the coffee table, where there is a box of tissues just sitting there. Mocking her and her clean—well, clean _ish_ —jacket.

 

“Who’s awake?” Emma asks, her hand mere inches away from the box. “Henry?”

 

“N—no. _Him_. John Doe.”

 

Emma’s fingers waggle in the empty air, no closer to the tissue box. She releases a slow breath and resigns herself to the slightly itchy wool sweater she has somewhere on the floor upstairs. “Is that…a good thing?” Emma flounders, wondering why the awakening of a hospital patient would be so impactful on the elementary school teacher. Yes, she had been visiting him regularly with her students and on her own, but…

 

“Yes,” Mary Margaret says through her tears, a bright, pained smile adorning her features. “But he…he’s not well.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“He keeps calling himself Prince Charming,” she says in a rush. She pauses, another small, pained smile twisting at her lips. “And he keeps calling me Snow White, his _wife_.”

 

Emma thinks back to Henry’s book and briefly, so briefly, wonders if maybe it’s true.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next: Regina and Mary Margaret each grapple with the news. Regina's grappling involves a lot of sex; Snow's, thankfully, does not.


	9. Awakening

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a small chapter featuring Prince Charming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the longish hiatus. I've just had a lot on my plate, and this chapter was really difficult to write for some reason. I almost never write Snow and Charming, so that was an interesting experience to say the least. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy!

Nobody was there to witness it when John Doe finally opened his eyes to the pockmarked, dusty grey hospital ceiling. Not even the machines, steadily beeping away, were alerted to his awakening. It was a curious sound, one he had never heard before, and he felt his weak, atrophied muscles tense as best they could at the foreignness of the crisp sheet around him and the strange strings attached to him.

 

Questions and memories flooded into his long-inactive brain, his mind grappling to find balance between the two. Had he been captured by the Evil Queen? He had never felt so weak and useless in his life—she must have done something to immobilize him. But…what? He closed his eyes, trying to remember _something_. Anything.

 

He only sees a wardrobe built out of a magical tree. A small boy and his tiny daughter. And then a deep, roiling purple mist.

 

Had she enacted the Curse? Maybe this _was_ the curse. She had cursed him to this strange place of inaction and impotence. It was so white, though. He had always imagined the Evil Queen would be much more into blacks and dank dungeons than this ascetic, white room with white and glass walls.

 

Glass walls. Was he in some strange, large coffin?

 

Where was Snow? The thought grips his heart painfully, and it takes all the effort he can summon to turn his head to scan the room. He can see movement through the glass just beyond. A row of strange cots with people laying upon them and a number of women in white moving amongst them. There were strange candles hanging from the ceilings, illuminating the rooms brighter than he had ever seen inside a house or a castle.

 

He watched the concert of women helping the cot-ridden people. It almost resembled a battlefield hospital, only there was a lack of chaos and urgency, and the women certainly lacked the look of witches or healers—not that he was one to stereotype.

 

Eventually one of them makes her way toward his coffin. She opens the door brusquely and grabs a slab with parchment on it that is attached to the foot of his cot. He opens his mouth to demand of her where he was and what the Evil Queen had done to him, but what comes out is more of a garbled croak.

 

The shock on her face is evident, though it is quickly replaced by a look of detached efficiency. “Well, it looks like you’ve finally decided to join the living, Mr. John Doe,” she says coolly with a slight smile. “We weren’t sure you were going to make it.”

 

Had he died and come back to life? It isn’t like that hadn’t happened before, but twice _was_ rather unlikely…and who is this John Doe?

 

He tries speaking again, but again, it comes out as a dry croak.

 

“Speaking is going to be a bit difficult for you for some time. I’ll go get you some ice chips and will go find the doctor. He’ll want to ask you some questions, I’m sure.”

 

She leaves him with his mouth hanging open, and he breathes out a harsh breath that hurts his chest. Only minutes later, the woman returns with a cup full of frozen water and a man wearing a strange white coat. Was he some sort of strange pirate?

 

“Welcome back,” the man says to him with a tight smile. “I’m Doctor Whale. You’ve been gone for some time. Do you remember who you are? You can nod your head for yes, and shake your head for no.”

 

He shakes his head yes.

 

“Ah, good. That will help us plenty. Do you remember what happened to you right before you fell unconscious?”

 

He tries to remember, and all he remembers is that swirling purple mist and then…nothing. He shakes his head yes again.

 

“Perfect. Now, I don’t want to alarm you, but do you know how long you’ve been unconscious?”

 

He shakes his head no.

 

“It’s been almost a year.”

 

A year. What sort of time measurement was a year? The witch doctor must register his confusion because he awkwardly pats him on the arm in an attempt to soothe him. “I know that seems like a long time, but what you have to focus on now is recovery. I will schedule you for physical therapy and we’ll get you back into shape and out of here in no time.”

 

They want him to leave this purgatory? The Evil Queen…she couldn’t possibly have anything to do with this if he was being allowed to leave. Could she?

 

The nurse urges him to consume the frozen water, which he does with gusto. His throat is unbelievably parched, and the cold chips melt in his mouth and drip like cool spring water to soothe the ache some.

 

“Mary Margaret, I’m sorry, but he isn’t up for visitors right now. We need to run some tests—”

 

He looks up and sees _her_. Snow White. She is wearing strange clothing colored like fresh spring flowers and she’s cut off her long, beautiful hair. It makes her look softer, somehow, but it’s definitely _her_ , standing in the door to his coffin like a vision. She seems shocked, but he feels nothing but relief. Snow was okay. The Evil Queen hadn’t won, after all.

 

He can’t help the smile that overtakes his face and can’t help but feel a bit of disappointment when she doesn’t return it. She’s worrying her hands and blinking a lot, her mouth open and her eyes wide. She looks like Snow, but she lacks the innate strength and the fire—

 

“Snow,” he croaks out. She starts for a second, but there is no recognition there. _Mary Margaret_. That is what the witch doctor had called her when she had come in. His mind felt so heavy and so confused. He was almost choking with it.

 

“It’s ice, sir. Not snow,” the nurse says, her voice meant to be soft and palliative but really coming out as patronizing.

 

“He speaks,” the witch doctor says with a wry smile. “Can you tell us your name?”

 

“Charming,” he croaks out. “Prince David Charming.”

 

The nurse starts for a second, but continues busying herself with the strings and strange beeping things. The witch doctor smiles tightly at him and makes a noise that sounded like disapproval. Snow just freezes, her dark brown eyes wider than ever. She turns to leave.

 

“Wait!” he shouts, the word grating and burning against his throat. She stops in her tracks and pivots on her heel, one hand moving to grip the door frame, the knuckles turning white. “Please tell me…you remember.”

 

“Remember?” she breathes out.

  
“You’re my wife. Snow—” he pauses and closes his eyes, fatigue making the words and thoughts difficult. But she _had_ to remember. She had to understand. “White. Snow White. Rightful ruler of the…White Kingdom.” The last words come out breathy and weak, and he curses the state he is in.

 

The people in the room are frozen. Three pairs of eyes trained on the woman standing in the doorway. “I…can’t. I—” and she turns and flees, determinedly not looking back as she swiftly weaves her way through the cots and the white-clothed women.

 

“Well, nurse. It looks like we have our work cut out for us,” the witch doctor says with a wry smile to the woman. Charming feels his eyes grow heavy, and he is consumed by a thick blanket of darkness once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, criticisms and love are always appreciated :).


	10. Inside, we break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regina decides to maintain the Status Quo; Henry learns some interesting information--
> 
> Charming escapes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the short chapter and the long time between updates. I had to force this one out in between trying to publish a number of academic papers and navigate my tumultuous marriage. I shan't call this filler, but rather a setup chapter.
> 
> UPDATE: The story changes pretty dramatically starting from this chapter. I heavily edited the original Chapter 11 and have replaced it with this.

Regina paces the marble floor of her office, the sharp sound of her staccato heels not even registering as her mind whirled. The seams of her curse—the one that she gave up everything for, the one that was supposed to be her victory and her happy ending—were splitting before her very eyes.

 

“Madame Mayor?” came a timid voice over the intercom. “Is everything okay in there?”

 

Regina takes a deep breath and presses the button to answer. “Never better. Something has come up that requires my attention. You may leave for the day.” She let out the breath after her finger left the small black button. She wanted to scream. She could feel it clawing its way up her throat like something possessed wanting to be released. The nails of her left hand dug into her panty hose, cutting through the thin fabric and pressing deeply into her skin as she dialed Sidney’s number.

 

“Madame Mayor,” he answers, his voice dripping with its usual obsequiousness. It fuels the rage roiling within her, but she tamps it down. Her jaw ticks once, twice, and then her voice is level and authoritative, if not a bit gravelly with her distaste for the man.

 

“It seems our John Doe has woken up. The town deserves to know about this…miracle.” She cannot hide the distaste in her voice for the event, even though she knows Sidney will attempt to pry the reason out of her later. “I trust that you can put together a decent story?”

 

“Of course, Madame Mayor.”

 

Regina is silent. If her plan works—if she has remembered this correctly—the Charming idiot is actually married to her acquaintance, Kathryn. The news story would alert Katherine of her missing husband’s whereabouts. He might remember his wife, or he might not, but either way, he will be either swept into her care and away from Mary Margaret or will be thrown in the insane asylum and away from Mary Margaret. She cursed her inability to perform magic here. How easy would it have been to just poison him back into a coma!

 

“Is there—anything else you wanted from me?” Sidney asks, jolting Regina back to her conversation. His voice is rounded with hope, and Regina wonders idly why she hates this man who would do anything for her. He was the one to give her the opportunity to rise at her most vulnerable, and he has served her loyally since. Not a toe out of line except for the occasional, meek brush of the hands or standing too close that Regina always quickly shuts down.

 

“Don’t mess this up,” Regina growls into the phone before slamming down the receiver. She hears the opening and closing of the front door to the office and feels no relief in knowing her secretary is now gone. She feels slightly more centered after talking to Sidney, but her scheming didn’t feel as satisfying as it once did. She had schemed for years and had been thwarted at every turn. And not only that but—what would Henry think of her?

 

With a growl and a fierce movement, she throws this morning’s coffee mug against the grey-green doors to her office. It is followed by the expensive pen she used to sign official documents, _because what was the fucking point, anyway_? This was all a farce. A beautifully-constructed lie, concocted by hers truly. The only grain of truth in all of it was the love she had for her son, and even that was shrouded in thick layers of lies, lies, lies.

 

Was she any better than her mother, who had schemed, manipulated and forced Regina into the life her mother had wanted for her? Henry believed she was an evil murderer and hated her for it. How much more would he hate her if he found out it was actually true?

 

Her crystal nameplate and the crystal box that contained little odds and ends smash one after the other against the door. They shatter with hard thunks, the box crashing through the frosted glass of the door windows and the nameplate hitting the marble floor with a strangely happy tinkling noise. The rage inside her grew.

 

Part of her felt so wronged—so victimized by fate for stealing away her happiness again and again. Another part of her, one that had a voice so strong, determined and small that she could almost see its flashing brown eyes and floppy brown hair, said that this was all her fault. That she had carefully constructed her own unhappiness by sentencing herself to this farce of a life—this cheap status quo that for some reason she would not let slip through her fingers.

 

Regina hears the swift crunching of glass outside her door just before it bursts open to reveal one Emma Swan. Her panicked green eyes sweep the destruction of the room before landing on Regina with some relief. There is an understanding in her eyes that makes Regina sick to her stomach.

 

Emma walks forward carefully, pulling the hand Regina had resting on her stomach out to inspect it. She inspects the other hand, too, her eyes sliding up and down Regina’s arms before zeroing in on her tight black dress. Keeping eye contact with the mayor, Emma slowly pulls up the hem of the dress, revealing shredded stockings and skin rapidly reddening with blood. There are moon-shaped crescents sliced into the soft skin and long, reddened gashes cutting over them.

 

Emma swallows once, her breath deceptively even. She wants to crash her lips against Regina’s own—wants to own this strong, broken woman and simultaneously wants to be taken by her.

 

Her hand moves to settle on the older woman’s jaw. It clenches tightly under her touch even as the brunette’s breath hitches. Emma can see the indecision clouding the woman’s sharp coffee eyes, but she can also see the longing there and it pulls deeply within her, magnetic in a way that she has never been able to resist.

 

The longing, as deep and true as that might have been, is quickly replaced by something else. A guardedness and determination that Emma has never quite been able to discern the source of. Regina is pulling out of her touch, her head turned down and away, the hand once again on her stomach.

 

“Hey,” Emma says eloquently, her hand moving gently to Regina’s chin, where one finger guides Regina’s face back up to her own. The eyes are still guarded, and Emma smiles slightly, awed by the beauty that was Regina Mills in all her forms. She moves her fingertip from Regina’s chin to her lips, tracing their soft outline and making the brunette shiver.

 

It was a kiss—or as close as Emma Swan would get to kissing the mysterious mayor, anyway, but it made her feel breathless and protective and giddy nonetheless.

 

Einstein’s theory of relativity posits that entities with high mass will exert more force on entities with lower mass, and that this force is a function of distance. Emma has never felt closer to the guarded woman before her, and she has never felt so devastatingly attracted to her. How weak must she be that this tiny razor of a woman had such a hold on her? So close—they were mere inches from one another—and Emma could see every crease and pore of Regina’s face, could feel the soft puff of her breath if she were so inclined to breathe, could feel the slight twitch of lips and muscle and resolve under her fingertips, could feel her own disaster of a heart reach outward—

 

The loud clank of the clock tower draws them each out of the gravitational pull of the other, Emma’s hand flying quickly from Regina’s lips as the wide-eyed wonder disappears from the older woman’s face like it had never been there.

 

The mayor suddenly slams Emma back into the near-empty desk, the indecision and something else in her eyes now a very definable lust that shot right down to Emma’s core. Emma isn’t sure if this is because of the intimacy they had just shared or in spite of it, but as Regina begins moving her sinful lips down the column of her neck, biting, sucking and _owning_ so forcefully it brought pained gasps to her lips, Emma finds time stops and all coherent thoughts cease.

 

As most of the items that were usually on her desk were now smashed against the door, Emma feels no resistance at her back and ass as she’s thrown against the marble surface. She feels Regina’s hands ripping away at the buttons on her thick flannel shirt as her mouth continues to claim Emma’s neck with harsh teeth and lips no softer. She all but rips the shirt and the long sleeved white undershirt off Emma, her hands scrambling to push Emma’s sports bra over her breasts. Rough, insistent fingers pull at her exposed nipples, causing Emma to gasp. A firm hand comes down against the side of her left breast, the sound echoing loudly in the cavernous room. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but the unexpected nature of it is disconcerting to Emma. Usually, Regina is passionate, but controlled during their sex, her movements calculated up until a point. This feels desperate again—the Regina who threw herself at Emma that night in her study, not the Regina who coached soccer for her son and tries desperately to win his approval.

 

She roughly pulls off Emma’s pants, taking the plain cotton underwear with it. Just as she’s done unhooking the garments from Emma’s ankles, she lands a swift and hard blow to Emma’s ass, knocking the breath right out of the blonde. Then, without waiting a second, she does it again. And again. And again.

 

“Please,” Emma pants, her ass stinging and her eyes watering. Another slap rains down, just as hard as the one before and in the exact same spot. Her arousal is dripping down her thigh, but the cool air is working to dry it on her leg. “I’ll do anything.” Her cunt has been aroused for too long and now it’s just painful, the wetness and throbbing slowly abating, as Regina gives no indication of wanting to stop.

 

Emma chances a look back and sees Regina’s eyes flinty and completely glassed over, her hand red and mechanical. There are demons behind those eyes, and Emma can only hope Regina is able to exorcise them soon.

 

After forty—or is it fifty now?—blows, Emma can’t hold back her cries of pain any longer. They tear from her gritted teeth as she lurches forward after each hit, her breasts unsticking painfully from the cool marble each time. It hurts, and Emma knows this glassy-eyed Regina isn’t getting anything out of it, either. “Regina!” Emma shouts over her shoulder. Another hit lands and it feels like her skin is tearing apart. “REGINA!”

  
Emma squirms in the woman’s iron grasp, flailing before she’s able to wrench herself away. She shoves the stunned woman backwards, bending over quickly to grab her clothes and storms naked out of the mayor’s office, not looking back to see the despair written all over the broken woman’s face.


	11. Let them eat cake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here begins the new content of this story, finally here for you to (hopefully) enjoy. I am so sorry this has taken so long for me to write. It's been an interesting year to say the least, and I can proudly say I've now been accepted to a PhD program that I will be starting this fall!

Emma isn’t quite sure what it is about Regina, but she does know that since that day in her office, something is off. Suddenly, Regina has ordered Sidney to coach the burgeoning soccer league ( _I don’t think he even has balls himself, let alone knows how to kick one, Ruby had muttered last practice, gaining a sympathetic smile from Emma_ ) and is disappearing for hours on end. She isn’t at the mansion or in her office. She isn’t at the beach or jogging on her favorite path. She isn’t at Granny’s with a glass of whiskey in hand. It was as if she would completely disappear from Storybrooke in those long hours.

 

And perhaps she had. Sometimes Emma forgets that there is another world out there—the one where she doesn’t have friends or a kid or his magnetic mother or a job that includes dental and healthcare. Sushi on occasion would be nice, though. Maybe she’d take Henry and Regina out to Boston sometime soon. It would definitely be relieving to get away for a bit. And who knows? It might just help Regina get out of whatever weird funk she was in.

 

_(Mary Margaret had come home despondent yesterday and had broken down into a sobbing mess, apparently under the impression that she was a Horrible Educator, no thanks to one irate Regina Mills)._

 

And then there was the locked bedroom door. The first night Regina’s door was locked, Emma had thought it a fluke. She texted Regina to open it and had waited outside in her bug for an hour before finally giving up and going home. Was the woman really so emotionally stunted that she couldn’t have a simple talk about what had happened?

 

Emma hadn’t slept at all that night, tossing and turning and trying to envision her way into Regina’s bedroom. Into the soft, cool silken sheets and under the airlike down comforter; her nose nestled just under the nape of Regina’s neck and her arms heavy around the woman’s slim waist. Try as she might, though, her bloodshot eyes would open in the semi-darkness and she would sigh heavily, turning over and attempting to imagine Regina spooning her this time, because maybe, _maybe_ the ghost of Regina’s strong arms would make her fall asleep.

 

By the third night Regina had locked her door, Emma knew that it was no accident, but was also at a loss of how to broach the subject with the fickle woman. She stood, ashamed in the darkness of the hallway, her hand wrapped around the cool solid handle that refused to turn, her heart sinking fast in her chest and corroding in her stomach. What choice was there to do but slink downstairs, and abandon hope?

 

So she did just that, ignorant of the silently crying woman on the other side of the door or the pair of wide, brown eyes peering at her from down the hallway.

 

While Emma stared out of the cloudy windshield, dry-eyed and numb, Regina was grieving in the dark on the plush carpet of her bedroom. She was falling in love with the infuriating blonde. She has been falling in love with Emma for some time now, she supposes, but never had it hit her so hard as when she realized the True Love between the ignoramus Charming and the hopeful twit Snow had never lost its ripe bloom—not even after twenty-eight years. Those looks Emma had given her. The helplessness Regina felt in her presence, like she was falling off a sheer cliff and couldn’t bother to care…all of it could only mean one thing.

 

 _Of course_ letting go of her hatred and desire for revenge wasn’t enough to set her on the path toward a happy ending. She hadn’t had a happy ending on the horizon even when she was an impressionable, innocent young girl with an abusive mother. No matter what Regina did—no matter what path that she chose for herself—there was always the prophecy that Emma, the Savior, would come to break the curse.

 

She just had been too dense to realize that she _was_ the curse. That Emma Swan was born to break _her_ , Regina Mills, Mayor of Storybrooke, former Evil Queen of the White Kingdom. Emma Swan was born to be her True Love, to break the curse by infiltrating Regina’s many walls and quietly sieging her defenses.

 

She should have known by the way she always felt such a pull toward the woman. Emma had always held such a fascination for her, and the idiot woman seemed to hold the same fascination toward herself. Surely only destiny could make Emma so enthralled with her, because any sane human would run the other way. It was why Regina found it near impossible to keep her self-control around Emma, why she would find herself not just looking at Emma, but _drinking her in_ like she wanted to savor every last drop of her.

 

Regina laughs, high-pitched and slightly mad, in her bedroom, the sheets on her bed still smelling painfully of Emma Swan. Yes, Fate was utterly brilliant. Emma was her _True Love,_ and as happy as that should have made her, Regina was instead livid. Because once again, her love would be taken from her.

 

She could see it now:

 

The curse would break. Emma and Henry would hate her—and rightly so—for all of the lies she told. For all of the unspeakable things she had done. The townspeople would rebel against her for the curse of unhappiness she had cast upon them all. Henry might even lead the charge against her, his eyes blazing with that fierce defiance and determination that had wounded her so deeply before. And where would Regina be?

 

Alone again and likely behind bars… if not just instantaneously killed for her many crimes.

 

She could almost see the twin looks of betrayal on mother and son, looking in on her from the other side of iron bars. Emma’s face would bear the harsh drawn lines of anger on her face, her words hollow as she mutters, “You lied to us.” And Henry, sweet Henry, wouldn't speak at all—wouldn’t even look at her despite her pleas. And Regina would have absolutely nothing to say in her own defense. Not one thing.

 

It hurt, physically, where her blackened heart lay in her chest and down deep in the chasm of her stomach. She clutched at it as the tears betraying her weakness fell rapidly down her cheeks and slowly rolled down her chin and neck.

 

She knew what she had to do.

 

She had to maintain the Status Quo. She couldn’t let Emma out of her life for many reasons, the first and foremost one being that Henry would never forgive her. She also couldn’t allow Emma to encroach on her life little by little—that would only advance them toward the inevitable curse-breaking.

 

She _would_ have her cake and eat it, too, damn it.

 

**Man In Coma Mysteriously Awakens, Goes Missing**

By Michael Wong—Staff

STORYBROOKE, Maine—A man calling himself Prince Charming has escaped from Storybrooke’s hospital, where he has spent the last few years in a coma. He mysteriously awoke two days ago, claiming to be married to Storybrooke’s own Mary Margaret and to be fighting an Evil Queen, who he believed put him in a coma in the first place.

 

“We were starting to think he would never wake up,” says Storybrooke hospital head nurse Ratched. “We were so very surprised when he did, though it became immediately evident that he had incurred serious brain damage from his long-term coma.”

 

Storybrooke’s authorities have asked that everyone be on the lookout for the man pictured above, as he is considered mentally unstable, and to contact the Sheriff’s department with any information on his whereabouts.

 

Elementary school teacher Mary Margaret refused to comment for this story.


	12. Death, it lingers

The first hints of dappled sunlight hit her pillow, rousing her from a hideous nightmare that had her heart racing and her breath coming in short, shallow pants.

 

_Faceless townspeople, gathering at her door, demanding her head—thick shackles clasped around her wrists by none other than Emma, her face marred by a scowl that never moved. Henry, standing hand-in-hand with Snow White and Prince Charming, standing imperiously with satisfied smiles. Emma’s eyes, hard, cold unfeeling. She wants to tell Emma everything, to have her understand, but her words, coming rapidly, seem to have no effect. The shouting is getting louder and Emma is throwing her roughly into the back of a carriage lined with thick, rusted bars. The wooden carriage wheels crunch on gravel as the faceless townspeople follow behind, spitting and jeering at her as they ascend a large hill. There, Sheriff Graham is crudely fashioning large planks of wood together, and Emma hops off the carriage to softly touch his shoulder and say a few words to him. Her face softens when she talks to him, and he turns around to kiss her deeply. The scene cuts straight to Regina’s gut—the sinking of guilt, the clawing of jealousy—and she watches, helpless, as a giant pyre is erected. They were going to burn her._

 

Regina moves mechanically, rolling out of bed and straightening the covers, placing the throw pillows just right as she did every morning. Emma always teased her about that, flopping down on the bed and leaving a vaguely Emma-sized imprint on the fluffed down comforter. Regina always left it there.

 

Regina showers, brushes her teeth and pads down to the kitchen to the coffeemaker. The fresh morning light pours in from the backyard window, spilling onto the countertops. Regina slides open the white chiffon curtains, a mixture of delight and dread swirling in her belly as she took in the first hints of spring. Patches of green dot her lawn, and the green shoots of what would be daffodils and the soft buds of what would be stunning rhododendrons hold the promise of Garden of the Year for her once again.

 

Filling the coffeepot to make only two cups (not six, because Emma wasn’t here), she decides that it is high time to prepare her apple tree for spring—the one Emma had nearly destroyed all those months ago. She had been so livid with the belligerent blonde—and yet, as the woman had stood there, chainsaw in hand, Regina couldn’t help but feel an overwhelming desire to kiss her violently. That look of sheer defiance on the blonde’s face; that simple, haughty smirk as she told Regina, “You have no idea what I’m capable of” was enough to set her on fire.

 

She had contemplated kissing her then and many, many times since. Only now, she knew that could never happen. She couldn’t risk a True Love’s kiss, though the thought that Emma could ever love _her_ was really altogether too ridiculous. Still, her shriveled heart rattled at the thought of kissing the woman, her body quivering at the thought of possessing, of taking and owning. Of—

 

She stopped the words before they fully bubbled into her conscious thought. It was a delusive endeavor. Not giving name to it wouldn’t preclude it from happening.

 

 _Love_.

 

Hands once again shaking, Regina loads her coffee mug into the dishwasher with a too-loud rattle and unplugs the coffee machine, heading into her garage to find a rake, her pruning shears and a shovel. She would have to go to Game of Thorns to pick up mulch, but that shouldn't be too much of a hassle. She always got along with Moe French, though his face always reminded her of the innocent woman she had sent away to the asylum as a cruel act of revenge and leverage against Rumplestiltskin. It had to be done, she reasoned, stepping out of her Benz and striding into the shop.

 

“Good morning!” greets the heavy-set man with a wave of his scissors.

 

Regina simply inclines her head to him in greeting, not seeing much _good_ about the morning at all.

 

“It’s setting up to be a fine spring, isn’t it?” he asks conversationally, straightening up from an arrangement of hideously pink roses.

 

“Indeed,” Regina grates out. _Count to three_ , she tells herself, willing the desire to snap at the man away. She breathes out once, twice.

 

“What can I do for ya today?”

 

“Two yards of cedar mulch,” Regina answers brusquely.

  
“Ah, still takin care of that tree of yours? You make some of the best apple cider I’ve ever had.”

 

“Thank you.”   
  
“You need me to haul it?”

 

“No, I brought some bags.” Gods, she just wanted this to be over with.

 

“Well, then. That’ll be $87 on the dot. And here—I’m throwing in some of this fertilizer for free. I saw your tree the other day and it wasn’t looking so good.”

 

Confusion crossed the mayor’s face, but she didn’t say anything, desperate to get out. Human interaction was not what she needed today.

 

She congratulated herself for remaining somewhat polite to the man and pulled her car around the back of the shop where he kept the gardening supplies. A flash of blonde hair caught her eye.   


He looked worse for wear, but it was definitely the loathsome Prince Charming, sliding none-too-slyly into the shop from the back. She wishes she had a way to contact Sidney, who could easily detain the man and drag him to the mental institution where he belonged. Regina, however, had a reputation to protect. These things needed to be done a little more discreetly.

 

She bit her lip hard, drawing blood, and quickly started shoveling the sharp-smelling cedar chips into the two thick cloth bags she had remembered to bring. As she was finishing up her second bag, the back door opens again, the idiot Charming slinking out with that hideous bouquet of pink roses.

 

He couldn’t be giving those to the insufferable Snow White, could he be? Regina quickly throws the sacks of mulch into her trunk and speeds into the shop once more.   
  
“Mayor Mills,” Moe French greets again with surprise. “Something wrong?” he asks, noticing the strange look on the woman’s face.

 

“No—not really. May I use your phone?” The plan was forming in her head, sick glee clawing its way up her throat.

 

“Of course,” he says pointing to the phone behind the checkout counter. “It’s all yours.”

 

Regina looks out the window and catches a glimpse of the moron headed in the general direction of the school, where Snow White was undoubtedly teaching her students about birds and true love and all of that nonsense. She dials Sidney’s number quickly, curbing her initial impulse to bark orders at him in lieu of Moe French ostensibly within hearing distance.

 

“Sidney, it’s me. Our subject is headed down towards the school with a potentially compromising present. Make sure it gets known,” she says in a very low, hushed tone.

 

“Of course,” Sidney responds warmly. “Is there anything else—”

 

“No. Just don’t fail me.” She hangs up the phone and casts Moe French a tight smile and a nod of acknowledgement.

 

“Good luck with that tree!” he calls after her, and Regina feels a slight niggling of dread as she drives over to city hall.

 

The dread turns to shock as her beloved tree comes into sight. The tree looks withered and drooping, its bare branches a dark black rather than a sandy brown. What—how? Did…was this Emma? She had never seen any tree look quite like this, as if something were leeching away its very life force.

 

She put a hand over her left breast, an acute pain starting to prick dully there.

 

It looked like her heart.


	13. From Death cometh Spring

“Did I do that?” a voice she knew well asked from somewhere behind her.

 

Regina smiled wryly. Yes Emma had, though certainly not with a chainsaw. Her tree had been thriving during the Curse, designed for perfection by Regina herself. It was no coincidence that it was dying along with the perfect existence she had crafted for herself, the truth of her existence slowly seeping through the façade. Emma the Savior had brought this on her tree—had brought this on Regina herself—unknowingly though it might have been.

 

“In a way,” Regina responds after awhile, taking in the woman for the first time in almost a week. Emma looked _good_. She looked better than Regina had ever seen her. Her hair was full, bouncy and shiny, her eyes bright green and gleaming in the morning sun. As the curse weakened, it seemed, Emma grew ever more radiant.

 

“Well, shit. I’m…I didn’t mean…I didn’t mean to do… _that_ ,” she says, gesturing weakly towards the tree with a pained look on her face. “I know this tree means a lot to you.”

 

“Do you?”

 

“Yeah,” Emma says, shrugging. “Why else would I have taken a chain saw to it? I knew it meant something to you. I knew it would get your attention.”

 

Oh. As infuriating as Emma could be, Regina realized that even back then Emma had been _paying attention_ to her. Nobody ever paid attention to her, let alone wanted her attention (other than in her official capacity, in which case, everyone was rather continually demanding her consideration).

 

Emma offers her a small, hopeful smile, and Regina hates how it immediately makes all the ice in her veins and clawing around her heart melt.

 

Emma’s smile grows bigger as she steps further into Regina’s space. “I know I screwed this up,” she says, and Regina isn’t quite sure if she’s talking about the tree or something else. “But I’d like to help fix it.”   
  
Regina sees hope and determination shining at her from beautiful green eyes and she forces what she hopes is a genuine enough smile to her face. Emma, like her idiot mother, was blissfully unaware of just how much damage she had unwittingly caused. “Go get the fertilizer from my car, Emma.”

 

 _Status quo_ , Regina reminds herself. If she could only keep Snow and Charming from one another….if she could just keep Emma from knowing the truth…

 

She could hold this together. The status quo would remain.

 

Slow, amorphous weeks slip by as Emma’s world becomes defined by longer and longer stays at 108 Mifflin and her son finally deciding—with all the encouragement in the world from Emma—to move back in part-time with his brunette mother. It would be perfect if only the idiot Charmings would stay away from one another and her tree would just look alive again.

 

“I told you to leave—” Regina pauses to grab her watch from the nightstand and squints at the numbers, “Four hours ago! Why the hell are you still here? Henry is awake!”

 

“Yeah, I know. I saw him downstairs.” Emma is in hot water. She _knows_ she’s in hot water, but she hopes that maybe this will be the push Regina needs to acknowledge what they have as something other than near-nightly screwing.

 

“You _what_?” Regina hisses, anger and danger written all over her face.

 

“I made breakfast,” Emma shrugs, keeping things casual. “Eggs benedict with turkey bacon and fruit.” She seals it with a smile for good measure.

 

“Get out. Now,” Regina says, and it’s so low Emma almost doesn’t hear it.

 

“Um. What?”

 

“You heard me. Does Henry know about…this?” Regina asks, gesturing angrily between the two of them. The woman couldn't even put words to their relationship—maybe Emma had misjudged how far they had come.

 

“No. He just assumed I had shown up early to make breakfast. I dunno. He didn’t ask. I mean…he did ask for some bacon. A lot of bacon.”

 

Regina relaxes visibly at this, but the anger on her face is instead replaced by a strange look Emma hasn’t seen many times before but can never quite comprehend when it’s there.

 

“Why do you persist in taking up space in my room? Leave,” Regina growls, and this time, Emma knows she’s lost.

 

Just how much remains to be seen.

 

Emma ruffles Henry’s hair on the way out, telling him to go bring his mother breakfast in bed in about ten minutes. Emma had already made everything, so all he needed to do was make sure it was kept warm in the oven (Emma had turned it down all the way to keep it warm while Regina woke up) and to turn the stove off when he was ready to bring it to her.

 

Emma is pretty sure she’s supposed to be feeling sad, dejected and maybe a little angry right now as she walks home carrying the weight of rejection. Instead she only feels a vague sense of emptiness and loss that feels just out of reach.

 

 

Regina remembers with pink-stained cheeks how soft skin at the base of Emma’s neck was as she had nuzzled into it in the early morning, how proud she was as she felt the sticky, heady remains of Emma’s arousal from their activities the prior night. How pleased she felt (the sentiment quickly followed by panic) when she realized that Emma had stayed and cooked breakfast. This was everything she had ever wanted—

 

Everything she couldn’t have.

 

Emma was breaking her, fate moving quickly to screw her over again. It was brilliant and saccharine, the Savior breaking the Evil Queen with True Love. But Regina always knew she was destined for Unhappiness. Every moment with the blonde and her sweet, sweet son and every smile from them that blossomed hope in her heart was poisoned with the knowledge that this couldn’t last.

 

Toast, black—peeking up at her from the stainless steel toaster is a testament to her failure, to her inability to do anything right. Sunlight streaks in through the window and she notices a bird flittering about her backyard looking for worms. She feels a distinct tightening of her throat and a fizzling in her veins as her mind connects the word _bird_ with Mary Margaret, Snow fucking White, who only stood to gain from the unraveling of everything Regina had built here.

 

Emma, cooking breakfast for their son in the morning had been too much for her. Had been too tangible for her, hinting at things ( _family, happiness, love_ , a demon whispers from behind her left ear). Rage, anger, guilt and a thousand other negative emotions swirled in her stomach, squeezing up through her esophagus like bile. Remembering her son likely sitting somewhere just upstairs, instead of screaming like she wanted to, Regina Mills cried.

 

The air is thick with burning and the toast is black and she won’t eat it. Lukewarm coffee slides down her throat to an empty stomach roiling with regret. Tears fall faster than her fists can wipe them away. The bird has found a piece of plastic and is taking flight. She can’t make herself throw the toast away.

 

Family.

Happiness.

Love.

 

She reaches to unclasp the window, but her fingers fumble on the clasps and the window, closed since at least last Spring, sticks fast. This simple action denied her, all the air in her lungs leaves with a heavy whoosh, a self-pitying, silent and tearless sob curling her mouth into an imperfect circle. There are smudges, now, on the window and she can just make out the whorls of her prints. The tears are drying quickly on her cheeks now. Her face feels caked and she wonders, idly, if she, normally so full of passion, has ever felt this empty.


	14. Presents aren't always gifts

Henry isn’t sure what’s going on, exactly, but he _does_ know that he’s going to find out. Things had been getting better. The weekdays started with Emma and Henry dropping by his mom’s house, where Emma would give his mom a coffee or a green-tinted breakfast smoothie and his mom would give Henry his school lunch and usually have something for Emma as well.

 

Three days a week they would all go to after-school soccer practice together, and his mom would make sure to cut up oranges in little wedges and Emma would always try to sneak the whistle away from his mom. She was never successful, but some of the kids had started yelling “Swiper, no swiping!” at Emma every time she would try, and sometimes Emma would even gamely say, “Oh, man!” when she was caught.

 

Yes, things had been going well.

 

So when he found Emma in the kitchen on Saturday morning, apron tied over her usual jeans and sweater, he had just thought it was another progression in their time together. His mom’s Reintegration was going smoothly, and they were becoming a real family.

 

But then Emma had ducked out of the house, misty-eyed with her hands deep in her back pockets, and his mom had just hugged him and told him everything was all right. That this was a grown-up thing, and he shouldn’t worry about it.

 

Fat chance of _that_ happening.

 

Everything was most certainly _not_ all right, especially because he hadn’t seen his mom and Emma in the same room together for over two weeks now. Emma had stopped bringing him to Mifflin before dropping him off at school and his mom had resumed bringing him his lunches just before he went into school to start the day. He still stayed with his mom on weekends, but she looked tired again, and kept hugging him and telling him how much she loved him. Like she knew she wouldn’t have much time to do it soon.

 

Ruby had started showing up to soccer practices because Emma was suddenly ‘very busy’ at work, and his mom began to look sad again. She would have _that face_ on constantly, the one she would put on when she was hiding something, when she was lying. And Henry isn’t sure who she’s lying to or what she’s lying about, because even when Henry would ask her if she was okay, she would reply with, ‘Sons shouldn’t have to worry about their mothers, Henry’ and would change the subject. And if she wasn’t lying to Henry—could she be lying to herself?

 

“Ma!” Henry greets his blonde mother with an exuberant hug. He might live with both Emma and Mary Margaret half the time, but he’s seen more of his teacher than he’s seen of his ma in the past couple of weeks.

 

“Hey, Henry,” Emma says, snuggling into him before ruffling his hair.

                                              

He looks up at Emma with a look undoubtedly garnered from the Regina Mills collection. It’s two parts parent and one part judgmental. “Where have you been?”

 

Emma shrugs, a small simper on her face. “Work.”

 

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s _so_ busy.” It’s sarcastic as all hell and again, Emma almost smiles thinking of how _Regina_ the kid is. The thought of the woman, though immediately has her features sagging before she manages to mask them into a neutral shield.

 

“There are…patrols to do and papers to file,” Emma defends. Seeing Henry’s unamused expression she adds, “And all sorts of adult things ten year olds don’t have to worry about.”

 

“Mhmm,” Henry hums, totally not buying a word his blonde mother was spouting. The adults in his life seriously couldn’t handle things on their own. “I’m sure that’s why you couldn’t make it to soccer practice and Ruby could.”

 

“So what if it is?” Emma is beginning to feel a bit cornered and is starting to get defensive, which is ridiculous because she’s talking to a fourth grader.

 

Henry huffs—he _huffs_ , just like Regina does—and crosses his arms in a no-nonsense manner. “You’re deflecting.”

 

How on earth had her loins produced a forty year old man instead of a little boy? She brushes past him and moves, zombie-like to the kitchen, where she starts preparing a pot of coffee. Henry, stubborn like Emma and dogged like Regina, follows her.

 

“Emma,” he says seriously, sitting down heavily at one of the kitchen barstools. He eyes the growing heap of coffee in the filter with concern, knowing that Emma should be sleeping after her night shift rather than making enough caffeine to wake a hibernating bear. “I know you and mom are fighting.”

 

Emma’s head shoots up from the coffeemaker, her green eyes wide in alarm.

 

“I mean, it’s _obvious_. You’ve been avoiding mom by ‘working’ all the time and mom’s been locking herself in her study and playing Rachmaninov.”

 

“Rachmaninov?”

 

Henry sighs. That really _wasn’t_ the point. “Rachmaninov. The composer?” Henry asks in disbelief. Emma just shrugs. “She plays it when she’s sad.”

 

Regina? Sad? _Regina_ was the one who kicked her out. _Regina_ was the one who had left a box full of her stuff outside the door of her apartment that very day. _Regina_ was the one who ended…whatever it was that they had.

 

Regina was sad.

 

Emma also recalls the last time Regina was brooding in her study. She remembers the smashed glasses and bloodied hands. The anger and rage and hopelessness warring inside the beautiful brunette. It made Emma’s heart ache in a way she wished it wouldn’t. If she would just stop feeling things for Henry’s other mother, everything would be just fine. They could go back to whatever it was they were and could preclude any possibility of becoming things they weren’t. The possibility for Emma would always leave a stain on their existences together, even if Regina had made it undeniably clear that there _was_ no possibility.

 

Why did her heart keep insisting that there was?

 

“You should go talk to her,” Henry says after a long silence. It breaks Emma out of her reverie, and she moves to grab a mug. It says ‘Be the best you you can be’ with a smiling bird on it, and it’s so disgustingly sanguine that Emma mostly wants to chuck it at the wall, _a la_ Regina.

 

Fuck—could she stop thinking about the damned woman for a second? Regina was the one who kicked her out. Regina should be the one to approach her, not the other way around.

 

“ _You’re_ the one ignoring her, Emma,” Henry points out, as if knowing what Emma is thinking. Henry had seen the repeated attempts of Regina to contact Emma: 27 missed calls, fourteen voicemails and a long string of unanswered texts. And those were just on Emma’s phone. Henry could only imagine the ways his mom had devised to corner Emma at Granny’s or in the Sheriff’s office. “Plus, you know she’ll die before apologizing to you for—for whatever it is you guys are fighting about.”

 

The kid had good points. Emma just wishes they were a little less blunt.

 

“Fine,” she grumbles, gulping down about half her mug of coffee in one go. She has another shift starting in about four hours, and the last thing she wants to do is lay alone in her room under the guise of trying to sleep. It would only lead her to think, and lately, thinking has gotten her nowhere but places that hurt.

 

“Hey, ma,” Henry calls from the second floor of the loft, blessedly calling Emma away from her thoughts. “What’s this?” He’s leaning over the railing and is holding something Emma can’t quite make out in his hands.

 

“You know what your mother says, Henry,” Emma chastises. “Gentlemen speak—”

 

“They don’t shout,” Henry finishes in monotone singsong, clambering down the stairs. “You know you’re starting to sound more and more like her, Emma,” the boy says more seriously, the look in his eyes positively making Emma squirm. Somehow Henry had a way of looking at you that made you forget he was just a child. It seemed like he could look right through you—all your bullshit and walls—and just _see_ you.

 

For someone as guarded as Emma, it was ridiculously uncomfortable.

 

He holds out his hands, cradling a glass figurine. “What’s this?”   
  
“It’s a glass horse—why?”

 

Henry’s face scrunches up in consternation. “Well, I mean, where’dja get it?” He places it on the coffee table in front of them, inspecting it.

 

Emma considers lying, or…obfuscating, as Regina would call it. Why should he get to know where it came from? Somehow, Emma knew he would know she was lying, though. Kid might not have her superpower, but he was damned close. “I made it.”

 

“Whoa! Really?” He picks it up again, his eyes roving over the rough lines and awkward dimensions. Emma had taken a glass blowing class when she was in jail to pass the time. The horse had been her final project, and always served to be a bittersweet reminder of the transformative months spent there. She had come out of jail a stronger woman, with the resolve never to let her heart screw her over again.

 

How appropriate that Henry should just notice the little figure now, when she was once again nursing the wounds of a failed relationship. If you could even call whatever they had a relationship, that is.

 

“You should show it to mom. I think she’d like it,” Henry says casually, placing the horse back on the coffee table.

 

Emma narrows her eyes. Henry had probably planned mentioning Regina the entire conversation. “Why do you say that?”

 

He shrugs. “She likes horses.”

 

Emma rolls her eyes but gently plucks the delicate little horse from Henry’s palm. The glassblowing had been an escape from the drudgery of prison for Emma. Maybe horses were a way for Regina to escape, too. She wraps the trinket in a couple of sheets of yesterday’s newspaper, and is surprised to see the grainy profile Mary Margaret wrapped around the figurine. Curious, she carefully unwraps it again to read the article.

 

 

 

**FOUND: Mysterious Coma Man**

News Staff

_STORYBROOKE, Maine—The escaped coma patient suffering from amnesia has been recovered. The man, labeled by hospital staff as John Doe, has been taken to the Storybrooke General Hospital, where he will be evaluated for his deteriorating mental condition._

_An anonymous Storybrooke resident alerted hospital staff to his whereabouts on the school grounds of Storybrooke Elementary, where he was attempting to give a bouquet of roses to Storybrooke elementary school teacher Mary Margaret, who he repeatedly claims is his wife._

_“While I cannot comment on this specific case, I can say that hallucinations and delusions are certainly more common after a traumatic brain injury,” said Dr. Whale, head doctor of Storybrooke General Hospital._

_Due to the sensitive nature of Mr. Nolan’s case, Storybrooke General’s Psychiatric Ward has refused to comment on the health of Mr. Nolan._

_Mary Margaret has also declined to comment._

 

“Shit,” Emma curses under her breath. For a small town, Storybrooke certainly was filled with plenty of drama. She needed to go see if Mary Margaret was doing okay. She sighs and places the figurine at the center of the cluttered kitchen table, her plan to talk to Regina foiled in lieu of comforting her roommate.

\---------------------

 

It’s in the middle of her double shift that Emma receives a call at the Sheriff’s station.

 

“Sheriff Swan,” Emma answers. She takes a sip of coffee, her brow furrowing as the person on the line sniffles loudly.

 

“Sheriff…the newspaper…that’s my husband!” the woman says, her words broken by short sniffles and undoubtedly a large volume of tears.

 

“Whoa…whoa. Slow down there. Who is this?”

 

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m just—” she pauses, ostensibly to collect herself. When she speaks again, her words are much clearer, “I’m Katheryn Nolan. I just read the newspaper, and there was a story in it about a man in a coma who escaped from the hospital. The man…the man in the picture. That’s my husband, David.”

 

Emma’s brow continued to furrow. “O-kay,” Emma drawls out, her mind trying to wrap around this new information. This man had been in a coma for over a year…how was it just now that she thought to call about this? “When did you last see him?”

 

“It’s been almost a year…maybe even to the day. Yes,” she pauses, ostensibly to think. Maybe just to sniffle. “It would’ve been a year about two weeks ago.”

 

“So your husband is missing for almost a year and you had _no_ idea he was in a coma that entire time?” Emma is beyond skeptical, and doesn’t bother to hide it.

 

“We…fought. He said he was going to leave Storybrooke. He packed his bags and I just…never saw him again.”

 

Things still didn’t add up. Why didn’t anyone know that was him when he was admitted to the hospital? Storybrooke was a small town—surely someone would have known who this man was?

 

“Did he tell you where he was going? Did you ever try to contact him after he left?” Emma asks her.

 

“Yes, he said he was going to Boston. I’ll never forget it. He said he wanted ‘more adventure.’ He left me the name of the hotel he was going to, but told me not to contact him in case it was an absolute emergency. I tried calling him there, but his hotel room phone just rang and rang and rang. I just thought he didn’t want to talk to me, not that he—” and here she stops, a sob breaking through her words, “Not that he _couldn’t_.”

 

She tells Katheryn to hold, realizes she has no idea how to put someone on hold, then gently sets the receiver down on the desk, sighs loudly, and roughly rubs at her eyes with the palms of her hands. Poor, poor Mary Margaret.

 

She was going to have to do some investigating.

 

“Why don’t you come on down to the station when you’re ready? I’d like to hear more about your husband and what he did before his coma.”


	15. Relapse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm curious to think of what you guys think of this chapter. I really, really enjoyed writing it. I had no intention of having this in here at all, but it seemed to write itself. I like the idea of Regina not being on a straight path to goodness. We all relapse once-in-awhile, don't we?

She shouldn’t be here. Regina knows this. In fact, she’s been telling herself this for going on twenty minutes now, her heels clicking rhythmically against the hard tile of the hospital as she paced in front of the doors to the psych ward. Passing nurses and doctors had given her curious looks, and a couple of them had asked her if she needed any help, but she had run them all off with one of her patented sneers.

 

She shouldn’t be here.

 

She should just go home, have a glass of wine and finish looking over those reports for her useless bi-weekly meeting with the sinecure city council. Her thoughts turn to the infuriating Snow White, the woman who ruined her life and birthed the woman who was, again, ruining her life, albeit unintentionally. The rage barreled through her at the thought of the insipid woman and her idiot husband, ruining everything of hers again and again.

 

Her dull fingernails dig into her palms in a way that would be hard enough to break skin were she to have any nails to speak of. Fists clenched, she stops, letting the rage wash over her. It surprises her how easy it is to feel this way again, how easy it is for her to relapse after months of trying to _be better_ for Henry. She pushes her way through the glass doors and throws a politician’s smile at the nurse sitting at the large reception desk.

 

“Hello, dear. I’m looking for Mr. John Doe, the patient you brought in today. Could you point me towards his room?”

 

The woman looks apologetic, and Regina already knows she’s going to have to fight her on this. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but we can’t allow visitors at the moment.”

 

Regina smiles again and touches the woman’s arm gently. The young woman looks flustered, and Regina fights back a smirk. “Oh, it’s all right, dear. I’ll just be a minute. It’s official city business.”

 

“Oh—um, I suppose—if it’s just for a minute for, uh, official city business…” the woman says. She calls an orderly over on a walkie-talkie and asks him to bring John Doe to the visiting room.

 

Regina looks down at her nametag, which reads ‘Joan.’ “Thank you so much, Joan. I truly appreciate your dedication to our city.” She closes her ridiculously cheesy sentiments with another smile and a light wave, moving toward the room clearly labeled ‘VISITING AREA.’

 

She is seated primly in the cold metal seat when the orderly brings Charming in. His face registers surprised, then disbelief, then much to Regina’s delight, _fear_.

 

“The Evil Queen,” he says, his voice cracking just a little. “I should have known.”

 

The orderly straps Charming into his chair.

 

“I trust our conversation will not be monitored?” Regina asks the orderly, her words friendly enough, but laced with subtle threat.

 

The man inclines his head toward her in a half-nod. “Of course not, Madame Mayor.”

 

The door closed, Regina closes her eyes and takes a few moments to gloat. Prince Charming, helpless and spurned by his pitiful love. She feels herself inflate, her shoulders falling downward and her chin rising higher, the long-forgotten Evil Queen rising from the ashes of her memory. She feels good. Strong like she hasn’t felt in months, wicked like she hasn’t felt in years.

 

She opens her eyes. “Charming,” she drawls, drinking in the sight of him trapped and helpless. The determined set of his jaw reminds him of someone, but she brushes the thought away immediately. “Trouble in paradise?” she asks, her eyes glittering like polished onyx in the yellow lamplight.

 

“Where are we, witch?” Charming grinds out. “What have you done to my wife?”

 

Regina smirks, inspecting the smooth, rounded beds of her nails. “Don’t you know? I’m not a witch anymore. We’re in the Land Without Magic.”

 

Confusion crosses his features. “The Land Without Magic?” he echoes, as dull as ever.

 

“Yes, you fool!” Regina snaps. “Gods, I wish it were Snow here instead of you. At least _she_ has some brains to speak of.” Could Emma really be the daughter of this idiot? She thinks of a hapless sheriff getting one-upped by a punching bag and nearly smiles, covering it up with a quick glower at the man across from her. “We’re all in a land without happy endings,” she says with a wicked smirk. “Except for, well, of course, me.”

 

Charming takes the bait. “Oh, really? And what would that happy ending be, exactly?”

 

“Watching you and Snow live every day without each other,” Regina replies airily. “Oh… and fucking your daughter,” Regina finishes, almost as an afterthought. Almost. The look on Charming’s face is delicious as his eyes widen in shock and his arms flail at the restraints.

 

“YOU WHAT?” he roars, and Regina idly wonders if he would burst a blood vessel in his rage. It would mar his perfect face and suit Regina just fine.

 

“You heard me,” she says, pausing for effect. She locks her eyes on his and repeats herself, “I’m. Fucking. Your. Daughter.” The last word is punctuated by a challenging eyebrow.

 

Charming only sees a small, chubby baby with blue-green eyes and a white knit blanket, his eyes wide in horror.

 

“You should see her now, Charming. So tall, so strong and independent. Not a simpering little princess like she no doubt would have been had you not thrown her away. But my,” Regina says, chuckling, “She’s so deliciously corruptible now, isn’t she? No mommy and daddy to tell her to stay away from the Evil Queen.” Regina could feel herself settling into her evil queen persona, the monologue rolling past her lips with all the assuredness of a murderer and a regent. “No mommy and daddy to keep the Product of True Love from foster homes and jail time. No mommy and daddy to tell her she is wanted. Such a tragic tale,” Regina says, pausing in her pacing. She could almost feel the high boots tracing their ways over her calves instead of her stockings and work pumps as Charming took her in with narrowed eyes. She could feel the weight of a dramatic, ornate, high-collared coat that was practically a _modus operandi_ of the Evil Queen replace her sensible work vest and white oxford. Gods, this felt—

 

It was addicting.

 

“You threw away your daughter and now she’s _mine_ ,” Regina purrs, baring her teeth in triumph.

 

Regina could see Charming working his jaw, his teeth grating against one another in barely-concealed anger. “How old is my daughter in this land?” he finally asks.

 

“Old enough.”

 

Regina is surprised to see Charming looking…contemplative. His eyes, downcast, dart left and right, and she was sure if his hands were freed that he would be making some gesture of deep thought. “She hasn’t had a good life here. In this Land Without Magic?” he asks, sounding all the concerned father he never had been.

 

Regina scoffs. “ _As if you care_. You tossed her away, you impotent ape!” Her hand comes down hard on the metal table between them, but Charming, to his credit, doesn’t flinch at all. Or maybe Regina is just predictable like that.

 

Regina could see the calculation in the man’s eyes, heavy with decision.

 

“Say it,” she commands with a roll of her eyes.

 

“You say I don’t care, but you know what? I think _you_ do.”

 

Shit.

 

That wasn’t—this wasn’t— _how did he know_? The grey walls and metal table and Charming’s stupid fucking face swam before her eyes. Was she that far gone on the Swan woman?

 

He must have seen the shock on her face, because now he was the one that was gloating. So Regina did the first thing that came to her mind: she punched him square in the face. With the crack of her bones against his, she felt a brief flash of satisfaction before realizing that hospital staff would know she did this.

 

Before he could recover, Regina deftly unbuckled the straps tying Charming to the chair and then jumped back, screaming, “Help!”

 

Two orderlies rush in and tackle a dazed Charming. The nurse at the front desk follows close behind, and Regina turns wide, terrified eyes to her and lets out a small squeak in lieu of actual words. It must be convincing, because the nurse steps between her and the action happening behind and quickly ushers Regina out of the room, a comforting hand placed slightly too low on Regina’s back.

 

Regina speaks first, “I apologize. I must have not noticed him undoing the straps and before I knew it, he was trying to attack me.” She keeps her voice breathless and tries to inch away from the hand on her back.

 

“I’m so sorry, Madame Mayor. There should have been an orderly there—”

 

“Not to worry,” Regina says, quickly cutting her off. “I’d hate for the same thing to happen to someone else, though. Do you think he’ll be allowed any more visitors?” she asks, feigning concern.

 

“Not until we get him stable, he won’t.”

 

“Mm.” _Perfect_. “As this was rather…extraordinary, I would appreciate it if you and your staff could keep this quiet, hm?” She asks, leaning in closer to the nurse, whose pale blue eyes were bouncing between Regina’s opened third button and her face.

 

“Oh, yes, of course, Madame Mayor. I’m so very sorryisthereanythingIcando?” the woman asks, tripping over her words. They’re almost to the door, and Regina wants nothing more than to curl up in her study with her decanter of cider. The woman’s hand is still on her back and Regina feels decidedly unclean all over.

 

Regina throws the woman a shaky smile, “No, dear, thank you for understanding.”

 

Victorious. Regina should feel victorious and smug—feelings that had usually come easy to her. Charming was locked away and relatively safe from the clutches of Snow White. She had goaded him and taunted him to her heart’s content and had given him what promised to be a beautiful bruise to remember her by.

 

Then why did she feel so empty, like she had lost something? Perhaps it was because Charming had known. He had somehow figured out that she had feelings for his daughter—

 

Shouldn’t that have repulsed him?

 

Her heels click slowly against the tiles, the usual sharp, sure sound muted and slow with her heavy steps, weighted with dark thoughts and indecision. The fresh air did nothing to revivify her, nor did the cool feel of the leather underneath her palms in her immaculate Benz. Everywhere around her were the stirrings of life—twittering birds and chattering squirrels, Storybrooke’s residents crawling out of their frozen winter slumbers to enjoy the sunlight and the promise of Spring—but Regina was weakening and withering like her tree. Her mother was right: love did make her weak. Her love for Henry and her reluctant love for Emma had made it impossible to be the Evil Queen once more.

 

And without the Evil Queen to protect her, Regina wouldn’t survive a day once the curse broke.

 

She drove home, giving her secretary a call to inform her she wouldn’t be coming in that afternoon. The brief interaction with the sprightly woman left her on edge, her fingers curled painfully around the hard plastic of the receiver. The fingers on her other hand ghosted over the numbers on the dial pad, tracing a number she knew so well and had been calling, unanswered, for days.

 

“Emma,” Regina sighs to herself. She had regretted demanding Emma leave that morning, a move borne of her own inability to accept any modicum of happiness. Of fear and a knowledge that it wouldn’t—couldn’t—last. She had regretted boxing up all of the things of Emma’s she could find around the house in a panic, when all she wanted to do was forget soft blonde hair and a gorgeous dopey good-morning smile that was just for her. It was absurd, this constant war she had with herself. Happiness now always led to unhappiness later. There was no status quo. It was only good or evil, black or white, happy or unhappy, just like Henry had been insisting for some time now.

 

She lifts her hand from the receiver and heads to her study to become reacquainted with her decanter of cider.

 

Regina Mills was a fool. A doomed, love-worn and love-beaten fool.

 


	16. Loyaltiest lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which opportunity leads to loyalties lost.

Emma wishes she had read that stupid binder Regina had given her on Interrogation Tactics a few months ago as part of her “Sheriff Initiation” welcome package. The “welcome” had consisted of seventeen dusty binders filled with Police Protocol, a uniform and an introduction to the woefully inadequate filing system that included a number of drawers that were rusted shut.   
  
_“Jeeze,” Emma had said to Regina. “Some welcome. Doesn’t anybody know what Office Cake is around here?”_

_“Oh yes. We reserve that for people we actually appreciate,” Regina had responded, snarky as ever._

 

So maybe Emma was a little bit masochistic, but man—did she love the way Regina would raise her dark eyebrow and fight back a satisfied smile as she delivered her snarky comments. She loved the way Regina would preen as Emma would flounder around for a witty retort, and the look of impressed surprise that would flit across Regina’s face for a brief second before her lip would curl again, sharp tongue at the ready.

 

“So, Mrs. Nolan. Tell me: what did your husband do for a living?” Emma starts off her interview. She opts to conduct it over her cluttered desk rather than in the interrogation room, which seemed like it would spook the weary woman before her.

 

“David ran the animal shelter,” the woman says fondly.

 

“We have an animal shelter?” Emma asks, befuddled.

 

“It’s north of downtown, just on the edge of the woods. You wouldn’t ever see it if you didn’t know it existed.”

 

“That explains it, then,” Emma says with a bit of a smile. She clicks the pen she’s holding in her hand a few times for good measure. She’s not sure what to ask the woman. She’s not even sure what she’s searching for. It just all seems so…strange. She had interviewed hospital staff about David Nolan and they had said an anonymous caller who had found him on the side of the road, unconscious with no wallet and no ID, had reported him to the sheriff. Graham had taken David to the hospital himself, and by all accounts he had known David through his work at the animal shelter. Why would he do this?

 

“Did you know Sheriff Graham at all?” Emma finds herself asking. She can still feel the dull thud of Regina’s fist against the side of her face, the dark, blazing eyes full of anger and possession. It made her stomach roil and her skin crawl with the suspicion that his blood was on Regina’s hands somehow.

 

“Not much. David did, I think. He always said that the Sheriff was a glorified dog catcher in our sleepy little town,” Katheryn responded with a sad sort of smile. She looked tired. Worn.

 

It simply made no sense to Emma. Why would Graham bring David to the hospital and not tell anyone who he was? Why would he not notify Katheryn? Why hadn’t that slimy newspaper man splashed it all over the town newspaper?

 

Emma passed her hand over her face and let out a rough sigh. “I’ve been told that your husband was brought to the hospital by Sheriff Graham. Is there any reason why he wouldn’t have notified you that your husband was in the hospital?”

 

With wide eyes and a sharp intake of breath, Katheryn looked almost shocked, as if she had never considered the possibility that someone had been trying to harm her husband. Emma could tell it was genuine, and all but eliminated Katheryn from her short list of potential perpetrators. A chilly breeze blew in from the open window. It had been so mild outside before, the breath of spring making the air feel much warmer than the large thermostat hanging outside of Game of Thorns said it actually was. This wind felt frigid like winter again.

 

“No,” Katheryn responded slowly. “No, I can’t think of any reason at all.” The woman’s green eyes glazed over with confusion, her eyes resting somewhere on the corner of Emma’s cluttered desk as she processed Emma’s question fully. “You don’t think that Sheriff Graham had anything to do with…”

 

“I’m just trying to find the facts,” Emma says gently. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise.”

 

After writing down notes in her file, Emma jumps in her cruiser to find one Sidney Glass. He was always hanging around City Hall, usually hanging around Regina with all the dedication of a dog nursed back to health by a kind stranger. Only Regina was anything but kind to him. In all honesty, the strange relationship between Emma’s somewhat-lover and the unctuous newspaperman had the blonde thoroughly disturbed. It was yet another warning sign in a long list of glaringly obvious red flags running through her mind like six-foot high marquees in Times Square, telling her to stay the fuck away from the irresistible Regina Mills.

 

“Have you seen Sidney Glass lately?” Emma asks the secretary as she strolls into city hall.

 

“Oh, um…” the girl casts a nervous glance to the closed door of the Mayor’s office. With a wavering, but determined set of her chin, she responds more confidently, “I don’t believe I’m authorized to report the whereabouts of citizens.”

 

Emma rolls her eyes and pulls out her Sheriff ID card and badge. “This is official police business. I’m investigating an attempted murder, and I have some questions to ask Storybrooke’s most industrious reporter,” Emma says, her voice lowering an octave as she shifts from friendly to business mode. “Now…do you know where Sidney might be?”

 

Blue eyes wide, the girl nods. “He’s with Mayor Mills.”

 

Emma steels herself against the realization that she would have to encounter Regina, finally, after the woman unceremoniously kicked her out. As Emma heads, determined, toward the white doors, the girl shouts out, “I’m sorry Sheriff, I—”

 

“I get it. Regina’s kind of a bitch,” Emma responds with a shrug. And with that, she pushes open the door.

 

The scene in front of her takes two long seconds to register in Emma’s brain. The beats of time tick slowly in her consciousness, her eyes taking in the sight of Regina pressed with her back against the front of her desk, Sidney’s body pressed up against her.

 

_One._

The moment settles within Emma, registering with what she could only later express as surprise. She notices a hand over Regina’s face, her usually flinty russet eyes glazed with a ragdoll-like submission under the pressure of another hand around the delicate column of her throat. She sees one white-knuckled hand gripping the edge of the thick white slab of a desk.

 

_Two._

 

The dull, slow and languid realization that this was Regina, the mother of her son, the royal bitch who had tried everything to keep him from her and woman she was undoubtedly infatuated with—that this woman, cloaked in all of this, was currently being _assaulted_ seeps like syrup into her pores. It lingers there for a moment.

 

And then she sees red.

 

The following moments are jumbled in her mind. Emma knows she screams something at Sidney, she sees him turn around in surprise, his hands loosening enough for Regina to choke down a gasping breath, her chest heaving as Sidney scrambled away like the coward he was. She thinks he tries to slip around her, but she sweeps his feet underneath him—or… maybe he just falls in his haste. Either way, she has him cuffed and on the ground with her boot jamming in between his shoulder blades within seconds. She shouts something to the secretary, her voice sounding so deep and far away, like it’s not her own. She wants to glance back at Regina, standing still and pale and rigid against her desk, but she knows she needs to get Sidney out and away. Emma knows the signs of trauma—she’d seen them dozens of times as she jumped from foster home to foster home. But she can’t stop to take the woman in her arms like she wants to. She has a vile man struggling beneath her.

 

Her green eyes meet glassy brown, and Emma almost wishes for the flashing, combative orbs of months past. It’s as if Regina sees right past Emma, her rapid breaths the only indication she was at all alive.

 

And then Emma’s hauling the cretin out of the office and into Storybrooke’s only jail cell, her movements rough and jerky as she purposefully manhandles the creep. She searches him thoroughly, finding a sharp hunting knife at the ready in his tailored work pants. His eyes were wide and haunted, but Emma couldn’t be sure if it was because he was truly disgusted with himself, or because he was simply afraid of the consequences of his actions. Emma quickly processes the man, ignoring all of his simpering pleas as she went through the motions of taking his mug shots and filling out requisite paperwork before she forgot some of the details of the incident.

 

With Sidney safely behind bars, Emma quickly phones Ruby, her sometimes-deputy, to watch the prisoner while she went back to the scene of the crime.

 

She found the secretary gone and Regina sitting primly at her desk with a tumbler of what Emma thought might be scotch in her hand. The usually acerbic woman was unusually quiet about the arrival of the Sheriff; only a small downturn of her red lips even indicated she saw the woman.

 

Usually rather quick to slip into Sheriff-mode, Emma found herself unable to come up with the right words to say. She knew she needed to take a statement from Regina, and probably should ask her how she was doing but suddenly…Emma felt _awkward_.

 

Her hands and feet felt too big as she made her way into the room and located the side table laden with crystal decanters and liquor tumblers. She selected one at random and poured herself a healthy dose of what smelled like apple cider. Regina still hadn’t looked up, her eyes seemingly transfixed on the glass before her. From her vantage point, the Sheriff could see the woman worrying her hands together, nails scratching over skin in a way Emma knew would eventually bring blood.

 

Emma takes a large swig of the cider, coughing a little as it burns on its way down. “Jesus. Did you make this with Everclear?” Emma finds herself saying. The words sound forced and die quickly in the air.

 

Regina drains her glass and finally looks at Emma. “No,” she responds, her voice sounding scratchier than usual. “Just arsenic.”

 

The corner of the left side of Regina’s mouth twitches slightly as Emma sputters into her cider again. It has Emma feeling lighter than she has in days before a deep, yawning pit of reality re-opens in her stomach.

 

Without a word, Emma refills her own glass and brings the decanter with her to Regina’s desk. She places it between them and refills the other woman’s glass as well before sitting back to regard her.

 

And she finds Regina looks…tired. Wan and pale and sickly in a way Emma has never seen, as if defeat is consuming her from the inside. She looks like the apple tree sitting desiccated just behind Regina outside.  

 

Shaken, Emma takes another long gulp of the cider in front of her, this time steeling herself against the inevitable burn. She licks her lips nervously as Regina continues to worry her hands underneath the desk. One of them has to speak, Emma knows, but the air is so fraught with unspoken words that it precludes the utterance of any that might clear it.

 

“Regina,” Emma says softly, the syllables as good a place as any to start. The woman across from her stiffens, her hands stilling on her thighs and pressing sharp crescents into the stockinged flesh. Her glassy eyes skitter across Emma’s form, not quite meeting her eyes while showing some sort of indication she was listening.

 

The words _I miss you_ etch into the forefront of Emma’s consciousness and pool heavy on her tongue. She wants to feel her skin soft and insistent against hers. Wants to see the ghost of a smile quirk up the stern woman’s lips, humor sparkling mischievously in her deep brown eyes. “I’ll need a statement from you,” she says instead, her voice some semblance of professional despite the raging longing clawing at her insides. She thinks of the glass horse still on her kitchen table and wishes she had remembered to bring it with her today.

 

She can see something within Regina break. The thin sliver of vulnerability and hope shifting like shadows behind her eyes fall back, retreating behind a labyrinth of walls. Cold eyes finally lift to meet Emma’s. “Yes, of course.”

 

Emma crosses her hands over her arms, shivering slightly as goosebumps graze up her arms. “We don’t have to do it now. You can come by the station tomorrow,” Emma offers. She doesn’t know what Regina is feeling, and can’t possibly know how to react to it. Did the woman need space? Did she need comfort? The thought that she had screwed up in asking for Regina’s statement rather than offering her just someone to talk to froze the breath in Emma’s lungs.

 

 _Stupid, stupid._ Emma internally berated herself.

 

“I would rather get this over with,” comes the terse reply.

 

“Okay,” Emma responds with a loud swallow. She opens up her notepad and shifts her eyes to graze over Regina again. The woman’s face is as inscrutable as ever, but Emma feels nevertheless drawn to it, desperate to extract some sort of meaning from the seemingly perfect mask. “Do you want to tell me why Sidney was here?”

 

Emma watches the fingers dig into Regina’s thigh again underneath the desk. She doesn’t know that Regina is longing after something sharper than blunt fingernails, but she nonetheless remembers clearly the blood dripping out of a long and deep wrist wound. “We were holding a routine meeting about government matters when he brought up an interesting piece of news he had heard. He seemed to think it would mean he and I should leave Storybrooke to pursue a romantic relationship together, and didn’t take kindly to my refusal.”

 

Surprisingly, Emma’s lie detector doesn’t ping. “I suppose you won’t be telling me this interesting piece of news?”

 

Regina smiles, and it sort of looks like she’s trying to plaster on a patented Mayor Mills smile but has forgotten how to do it. “No.”

 

“Did he have a weapon?”

 

“A knife.”

 

“Did he attempt to blackmail you?”

 

At this, Regina pauses. “What makes you ask that?”

 

“It often takes blackmail for a cowardly man to get what he wants.”

 

With a sigh, Regina answers, “You’re smarter than I usually give you credit for.”

 

Emma doesn’t feel much like basking in the backhanded praise. Sidney had acquired information on Regina that had made him feel bold enough to finally demand something of her. That information must have been substantial for him to feel _that_ entitled to Regina.

 

“What does he have on you, Regina?” Emma asks, leaning forward over the desk in an attempt to catch the woman’s eyes.

 

The sincerity in her tone makes Regina’s withered heart clench, and makes it all the more difficult to respond with a cold, “It wouldn’t be blackmail if I didn’t mind spreading it around to anyone who asks.”

 

Emma bristles at this. She had thought she had meant something to Regina. That Regina could at least _trust_ her. “I’m not just anyone, Regina! I’m—” What was she to Regina, anyway, aside from the woman who birthed her beloved son? “I’m the Sheriff, and omitting information pertinent to an investigation is cause for arrest.”

 

The two of them locked eyes, each with jaws set and adrenaline rushing into their systems. It felt like before—before that night where Regina had tried to seduce her. And it felt—

 

Wrong.

 

_What was Emma doing?_

 

“If you have any more information you would like to report to the police, you know where to find me,” Emma says, getting up. She felt about as tired as Regina looked. Though all she wanted to do was wrap the woman up in her arms, Emma turns and walks out of the office, wondering why she could never ask for what she wanted.


	17. Belief.

After asking directions from Leroy, Emma makes her way over to the Storybrooke Pet Shelter, a low-slung building nestled next to a café Emma had never deigned to notice. A little bell tinkles to signal her arrival. She takes in the surroundings, which look strangely complementary to the décor in Regina’s study at Mifflin. Silvery grey tree branches crawled over the reception desk and the backdrop behind it. A frosted window like the ones obscuring the view into to her office in city hall.

 

Had Regina had a hand in building the shelter?

 

Emma stands with her hands in her jean pockets, surprised when a man she had never seen before walks in from a back room.

 

His white doctor’s coat is crisp and his smile genuine as he holds out a hand for Emma to shake. “Dr. Thatcher,” he says, taking Emma’s hand in a firm but gentle grasp. “Resident Vet here at Storybrooke Animal Shelter.”

 

“Emma Swan,” she responds, regarding the man with curious green eyes.

 

“But of course. Our town’s new Sheriff,” he says with a pointed look down at the badge on her belt. “Congratulations, by the way. Not many things happen around here without the say-so of Mayor Mills.”

 

Emma regards the décor again. “I take it that’s the case around here as well?”

 

He smiles knowingly at her, his brown eyes twinkling. “You’d be correct.” He places his hands on the counter in front of him. “Now what can I do you for? I assume you’re not here to take home one of our critters here.”

 

“You’d be correct,” Emma ripostes with the hint of a smile while settling back on her heels a bit. “I’m here on official police business regarding David Nolan.”

 

“David Nolan?” Dr. Thatcher echoes in a voice devoid of recognition.

 

Strange. “I’ve been told he used to work here.”

 

She watched as his eyes glazed over somewhat, his dark eyelashes settling over his eyes in a slow, contemplative blink. “Oh. Yes, of course. David. He works here part time.”

 

Doubly strange. “He works here currently,” Emma states, trying to keep the incredulity out of her voice. Her lie detector hadn’t picked up anything wrong with his statement. The man seemed genuine, and it had her all the more confused. There was something wrong in this town, and Emma felt more determined than ever to figure it the hell out.

 

“He works on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 10 am to 7 pm.”

 

“When was his last shift?”

 

“Yesterday, I think. Let me check…” he disappeared into a back room and came back with a clipboard and handed it to Emma. Sure enough, on the line next to yesterday’s date was a signature that unmistakably read _David Nolan_. She quickly scanned the rest of the page, seeing that every shift was either taken by David or…

 

Graham Humbert.

 

What the ever-living fuck.

 

She remembers his eyes, crazed, as he mumbled about curses and evil queens and saviors. She remembers the abrupt way he died on the floor of the station, a faraway look of realization shining brightly on his face just before he exhaled his last breath.

 

The logbook had the name Graham Humbert next to last Thursday, four days ago.

 

She remembers Henry, showing up on her doorstep clutching a storybook, chattering to her excitedly about how all of Storybrooke, which she couldn’t for the life of her find on a map, were really fairytale characters trapped in a decades-long curse enacted by his mother, the evil queen.

 

She exhales a puff of breath and forgets to inhale another one. Her fingers are clamped around the clipboard and she can’t quite remember how to move them to hand it back to the expectant veterinarian.

 

She had to talk to Henry.

 

 

Emma smiles warmly for a second as she spots her son bounding towards her cruiser after school. He slides into the passenger seat and offers her a heartbreakingly sweet smile. His little hand slides over and wraps around her own hand knowingly. “It’s okay, Emma. I know,” he says solemnly. “You’re ready to talk about the curse.”

 

The words fizzle within her. She’s not sure if she’s angry, curious or afraid.

 

“How do you think it works?” Emma asks. “Is it some Groundhog Day thing?”

 

“Groundhog Day?” Henry asks, his little face scrunched in confusion.

 

He obviously hadn’t seen the movie. “The same day repeating itself, over and over again.”

 

“Oh! Yeah,” Henry says, trailing off in contemplation. There’s a beat or two of silence, where Emma is sure her heart is beating double time. “That sounds about right. Everyone is always doing the same things at the same time in the same way,” he says, pausing again. Emma nervously fiddles with the air conditioning, turning it from heat to neutral. “Until you came to town, that is. Now everybody’s doing things differently. Like they’re supposed to.”

 

Emma resists the urge to do something dramatic, like shriek or slam on the breaks or something. “Supposed to?”

 

The irony is too real for Emma. Once, when she was young and starry-eyed, she had thought she would find her happiness in Tallahassee, Florida. There, the sun was always shining and Spring Break seemed inviolate. Though the tourists came and went, there was a constancy in Tallahasee, a perpetual summer that quickly eroded the beauty of the place. She remembers being fascinated by all the palm trees, and would excitedly point them out to her boyfriend Neal, who would laugh and roll his eyes at her innocent joy. The novelty of the thick-trunked trees and their wispy swaying leaves that made no sound when the wind caught them soon dissipated, as did the blissful feeling of sun beating down on her neck and the loud shouts of partygoers throughout the evening and early into the morning. Things never changed in Tallahassee, and Emma soon saw it for the curse it was.

 

“Yeah, they’re doing what they should be doing, without the curse.”

 

“What do you mean?” Emma asks, coming to a stop in front of the mansion on Mifflin.

 

Henry explains, and Emma finds herself believing the impossible fantasies pouring from her son’s lips.


	18. Glue Guns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is long, but it is The End.

It takes Emma three days to work up the courage to find Regina. Three days of not sleeping (of _agonizing_ , Henry calls it in that cheeky way of his) and being particularly irritable, so much so that Ruby now gives her a wide berth and Mary Margaret has taken to giving her long looks filled simultaneously with pity and encouragement. She had successfully avoided Regina for over two weeks, avoiding all attempts—both demands and casual appeals to her adulthood—by Regina to contact or corner her. Emma knew she was being childish, but she also had never felt so much before.

 

She had never let anybody invade her so thoroughly as Regina had, and the distance had served her well. She had decided after Neal had left her pregnant and incarcerated that nobody would get close enough to emotionally mutilate her again. And nobody had in ten decidedly okay years.

 

How could she have let Regina fuck her up this badly? This _quickly_.

 

It is with these thoughts that Emma stands determinedly on the doorstep of 108 Mifflin, her hands jammed in the pockets of her trusty red leather jacket, her body squared and her jaw set. She and Regina would go back to tentatively co-parenting Henry. Regina would ‘reintegrate’ on her own, and Emma would stop coming to dinners and would most certainly, definitely stop having sex with Regina Mills, the woman who blatantly lied to her for months about a curse—an actual fucking honest-to-gods curse—Emma still isn’t quite sure she can wrap her head around.

 

Emma’s first tentative knocks go unanswered. She waits a few beats before knocking again, this time louder. She knows Regina is home because her car is in the driveway and Henry had texted her that he was at the library with Belle but that his mom had stayed home from work that day.

 

That should have been Emma’s first warning sign.

 

The locked doors (Nobody locked their doors in Storybrooke. _Nobody_.) were definitely her second sign. She checks the doorknob on the front door to find it won’t turn at all. She trudges through the garden and tips the statue of a leaping pan only to find the spare key gone. She moves to the garage door to find the side door has been locked as well. She finally moves completely around the house and hops the fence in one smooth movement to try the back door. Locked.

 

Emma’s mind races. Why would the spare key be gone? Does Henry still have a house key? She pulls out her phone to call Henry, but decides she really doesn’t have the time—her heart is racing even faster than her mind, telling her that something is wrong, wrong, wrong, and the fear is pulsing through her veins with every pump of her heart.

 

She whips out her cell phone, quickly holding down the speed dial for Henry’s number. The kid answers after three long rings.   
  
“Did you tell your mom you told me about the curse?” Emma pushes out, trying in vain to keep the panic out of her voice.

 

“Yes,” Henry says, pulling the word out long like he’s wondering why his birth mother is asking the question in the first place.

 

Shit. Shitshitshitshit.

  
“I gotta go, Henry,” Emma says quickly, hanging up the phone to her son’s raised voice.

 

“Please no, please no,” Emma chants, looking at the hinges of the door and thanking the Powers that Be that the door opened inwards. She fixes her eyes on the spot just below the doorknob and stands back, resting her weight on her right leg before swinging it powerfully toward the door.

 

She hears the wood creak and snap, but the door remains mostly closed. She gives it another good kick and it swings inwards, Emma not even stopping to congratulate herself on kicking a door open like a badass before rushing in and barreling toward the study. The house is eerily quiet, and Emma wants to shout Regina’s name but feels it die somewhere in her dry throat. She moves down the hallway like a madwoman. The déjà vu is not lost on her, and her panic increases so much more because she has an inkling of what she’ll find. The study door is open a crack, and her heart is in her throat as she pushes the door completely open.

 

It’s empty.

 

It’s empty but it is again _destroyed_. Torn cushions, broken glass, overturned furniture, a large lump of blackened something in the fireplace, still smoldering. She knows Regina had painstakingly fixed everything that she had so thoroughly destroyed all those months ago, her need for perfection demanding she buy new rugs and new furniture, that she completely replace the set of whiskey glasses because she had smashed two of them. And now, it is all destroyed again. More thoroughly, even, than the previous time.

 

Emma swallows past the lump in her throat, her beating heart visibly thumping in her chest and her breath coming so shallowly a passerby would assume she wasn’t breathing at all. It’s when she sees the unmistakable color of drying blood marring the white carpet that she begins moving again.

 

She moves quickly through all the rooms downstairs, finding nothing but perfect order. As she’s ascending the large staircase, she remembers feverish moments of passion—of possession—that she had experienced there.

 

Regina taking her hard while she leaned over the banister, her bare breasts hanging awkwardly over the railing and her ribs pressing painfully into the hard wood.

 

Regina pushing her up against the wall with hard, determined eyes, her hands grabbing Emma’s ass forcefully and her lips almost, _almost_ , making contact with Emma’s own.

 

Emma’s boots thump loudly against the marble of the staircase and even louder against the polished wood of the floor upstairs. She stumbles her way into Regina’s bedroom, tripping over her own clumsy feet in her haste, and beelines for the bathroom when her eyes tell her brain that Regina isn’t in her bed.

 

Even though the fear and the anxiety have been pulsing through her veins for a number of agonizing minutes, she still isn’t prepared for the sight that greets her when she barges into the bathroom. She isn’t quite able to muffle the sob that pushes past her lips as the words ‘I’m too late’ flashes through her mind like a neon sign, blinking and obvious in a way that Emma wants gone.

 

“Regina,” Emma whispers, kneeling down beside the bathtub. Her hands shake as they push back the dark hair from the woman’s neck, her fingers wholly uncooperative as they try to find the woman’s pulse. She isn’t sure if she’s just not finding it or if the broken woman in the bathtub really is dead, but the tears falling from her eyes and the hopeless, sinking feeling dropping in her chest tell her it’s the latter.

 

Emma feels angry and robbed all at once—angry at herself for loving this impossible woman and robbed of the chance to tell her, which suddenly seems so, so important. As if telling Regina could make the woman love her back.

 

“Cake,” Regina mumbles, and it has Emma’s eyes shooting open in shock. She curses the film of tears obscuring the woman before her, and roughly wipes her eyes before Regina comes into focus again. Her eyes skate across the innumerable gashes across the beautiful planes of olive skin on Regina’s arms and legs. Some were superficial but others were deep and wide, blood still rising continually to the surface where the lighter ones had already begun to stitch themselves back together in dark masses of dark coagulated blood.

 

“Regina,” Emma breathes out before whipping out her cellphone and dialing the hospital. They had no real EMT service here in Storybrooke, and Emma knows that there is no way she should be moving the broken woman, so she manages to push out some syllables to the woman on the other end of the line, though she isn’t really sure of what she is saying. She only sees Regina taking up so little space in the large bathtub, and so much blood—in great, wide streaks and little rivulets—marring the glistening white.

 

Emma’s hand dares to cup Regina’s pale face, her thumb gently caressing the pale chapped lips. “Don’t do this,” Emma pleads to the woman. “Don’t leave me.”

 

“Cnt haff cake nd eatit too,” Regina slurs, her head lolling toward Emma. Her eyes open slowly, just a little bit, like it was taking far too much effort, and her clouded brown orbs focus somewhere far beyond Emma.

 

“Stay with me Regina. Please. Just hold on a little bit longer,” Emma pleads, wondering why Regina is thinking about cake at a time like this. Not that she doesn’t wonder what Regina is thinking about all the time, because she does, but now certainly isn’t the time to ask. She cups Regina’s face again, her fingers gently brushing the cold, clammy skin and her heart sitting somewhere where her mouth ended and her throat began. And then, on an impulse—a ridiculously stupid impulse—she kisses Regina’s sweaty forehead. And then her sallow cheeks. And then her chapped lips.

 

She isn’t prepared for the way her heart expands like it wants to fit a thousand Reginas inside at the contact, or the way the air around them shifts, a wind that shouldn’t exist blowing the hair away from their faces.

 

Emma isn’t prepared for her entire world to come crashing down upon her.

 

Emma isn’t sure quite how she knows, but she just _knows_ know without a doubt that everything Henry had been saying was real. The story book. The Evil Queen. The Savior. The curse.

 

Emma had just broken the curse.

 

With True Love’s kiss.

 

With Regina.

 

The Evil Queen.

 

Everything feels so different from what it was mere moments ago, but Regina is still limp, lying in the bathtub streaked with her own blood, and Emma suddenly realizes that nobody is going to come help the Evil Queen.

 

Regina cracks an eye open, a dopey, dazed look on her face. “They’ll kill me,” she says, forcing the words out with meticulous concentration not unlike a drunk person. “Anyway. They’ll kill me anyway. I’m so…” Regina’s one open eye closes again. “So tired. ImsorryEmma,” Regina slurs, her body slumping forward in a dead faint.

 

Emma knows that somewhere inside her she’s angry at Regina for lying to her. She also knows that somewhere she’s freaking out that fairytale characters are real and that she had been living amongst them for almost a year now. That if Henry was correct, Mary Margaret and the guy they sent to the mental ward were her _parents_.

 

But instead she feels like somebody has completely eviscerated her, tearing out her heart and her gut piece by piece, and it’s with some unknown internal strength that she makes herself get up and find the fresh towels in Regina’s linen closet. She takes off her boots and lowers herself into the tub with Regina, being careful not to jostle her or touch the many flowing wounds. Her movements smear the blood into Emma’s clothes, and she thanks the gods that she isn’t one to be queasy. She locates the worst of the wounds—one on each of the woman’s wrists and one deep one on her thigh, and uses all of her might to press down on them in an attempt to staunch the bleeding.

 

She knows Regina has lost a lot of blood. She also realizes she likely won’t be getting any blood transfusions.

 

“Please, Regina,” Emma chants again and again, watching the blood soak through the towel she has pressed to Regina’s thigh. It’s mere minutes before she hears shouts and banging outside, and it only gets progressively louder with the passing seconds. She curses and must press slightly too hard against Regina because the woman whimpers slightly. Emma wants to kiss Regina then. She wants to kiss Regina in a thousand different places and hold her hand and—

 

The sound of loud voices echoing from downstairs has Emma’s heart moving from its place blocking her breathing in her throat to down deep in the pit of her stomach, where it suddenly makes her feel very, very sick. She feels the donut and coffee she had for breakfast going the opposite way of her heart, and she wants nothing more than to curl up around the toilet and continue sobbing. She doesn’t want to leave Regina, but she also knows that they shouldn’t find her here. Emma wants to think that the townspeople she had come to know and love would never descend into mindless violence, but another part of her understands it, at least if Henry’s book had been accurate.

 

“I won’t let them hurt you,” Emma says to Regina, her voice faltering at the sight of Regina still slumped in the bathtub. She really doesn’t want to leave her—

 

She shuts the door quietly behind her, making sure to shut Regina’s bedroom door as well before running down the hallway and standing at the top of the stairs.

 

The whole town is assembled below her, some sort of just standing there angrily and others taking out their rage on various items in Regina’s kitchen and living room. “STOP!” Emma shouts, her booming voice enough to make everyone pause.

 

“What the hell is going on here?” she demands, her eyes zeroing in on Dr. Whale and Leroy, who seemed to be the leaders of the mob.

 

“We’re looking for the Evil Queen,” Leroy answers with a sneer.

 

“Emma!” Mary Margaret shouts from somewhere behind the large mob. She pushes her way through, a wide-eyed and teary Henry holding tightly to her hand. And Emma looks down at her clothes, realizing what it might look like.

 

“It’s not mine,” Emma says, and the looks of shock, satisfaction and horror on the individual faces in the mob spoke volumes.

 

“Where’s my mom?” Henry asks, his usually precocious and sure voice thick and unsteady. He looks around the house wildly, using both his arms to cling to Mary Margaret. “Where’s my mom?” he asks again, his voice two octaves higher and bordering on hysteria.

 

“Looks like the Savior got to her for us,” Dr. Whale drawls with a smirk that makes Emma’s skin crawl and Henry’s look to go from panic to terror. “How did you kill her, _Sheriff_?”

 

There were shouts of “Was it painful?” and “She deserved it!” and “Long live the savior!”

 

Emma needed to handle this delicately. She knew she couldn't fuck this up. “That doesn’t concern you. The Evil Queen won’t harm you any longer,” Emma responds judiciously. She wasn’t lying exactly, but it broke her heart to see Henry crumble, his little body falling to the floor with a soft thud.

 

“No!” he shouts, and everyone suddenly realizes that a little boy had just lost his _mother_. “No!” he shouts again, tearing away from Mary Margaret and sprinting toward the stairs. Dr. Whale grabs his arm, yanking Henry back, but he rips out of the man’s grasp as well, his little sneakers pounding against the marble.

 

“Henry, listen—” Emma starts, not wanting him to see Regina _like that_ , but also not wanting him to reveal that Regina was, for now, still alive. But he tears past her, slamming open his mother’s bedroom door to the shame of the assembled townspeople below.

 

“She was trying to be a better person for him. You _all_ saw it,” Emma says to them, her voice not her own. Most of the townspeople have the decency to look ashamed, save for a determined few.

 

“WE WANT THE CORPSE!” somebody shouts from the back. Emma thinks it’s one of the fishermen she occasionally talks to down by the docks, but she can’t be sure. A chorus of ‘bring us the corpse’ erupts and Emma wants to clobber each and every one of them.

 

“Do you people have any dignity? Henry is still a little boy, and Regina is still his mother. Now go. Leave Henry to grieve her.” They all just stood there, their necks craned up at her. “GO!” she shouts, her voice causing not a few of them to jump.

 

So slowly, in ones and in twos, they leave, Emma supervising their departure with more confidence than she felt. When it was only Mary Margaret and David left, Emma deflated.

 

“Emma—” David starts, but Emma cuts him off.

 

“No. Please. I need you to leave,” Emma pleads, looking over her shoulder to the door at the end of the hallway flung wide open, the silence of her son more unnerving than the crying or raging Emma had expected.

 

“I might need you to—” Emma’s voice breaks despite herself. Mary Margaret had been her friend. Somebody she could count on. Somebody she could trust. Snow White, though? The woman who was her mother and who had given her up? Emma wasn’t so sure she could afford the woman the same intimacy. Especially because she was the avowed enemy of the very woman Emma needed her to help. No, she was going to have to deal with this alone.

 

“Just go. Please,” Emma says, defeated. “And David?”

 

The man looks up at her, concern and a love Emma wasn’t ready to accept shining in his eyes.

 

“Can you make sure nobody bothers us here?”

 

She could trust her deputy enough to at least do that, she thinks. She feels a strange mix of relief and panic when the door finally closes—well, as much as a door with one hinge can close, anyway. Emma clomps down the stairs and jams the door back into place, pushing the long, marred sofa against the door to hold it closed. It wouldn’t stop anyone who really wanted to come in from entering, but it at least wasn’t inviting trouble.

 

She is grateful to find a package of powdered Pedialyte in the pantry and also is grateful to find a first aid kit underneath the kitchen sink. She fixes a glass of water and stirs in the Pedialyte, sticking a neon-colored bendy straw into it before grabbing the kit and hurrying back upstairs.

 

Of all the things she expected to find in the bathroom, she doesn’t expect to find Henry _smiling_.

 

“Emma will take care of you, mom,” he says, smiling a watery smile at Emma as she enters. He gently lifts his flat palm from his mother’s flat palm, and moves to let Emma near Regina. “You saved her,” he says, turning to Emma.

 

Emma shrugs, allowing herself to feel a bit proud for a second before jolting back to the painful reality in front of her. Gods—why did she have to be such an idiot? Regina had been trying so hard to be good. Emma had broken their boundaries and fucked that all up. And _then_ her pride mandated she ignore Regina, who, in the past couple of days, had gotten increasingly insistent upon the two of them meeting.

 

Why hadn’t she seen any of the signs?

 

“Henry, can you go find your mom a really soft blanket?” Emma asks. Henry nods seriously and bounds out of the room, and Emma turns her attention to the sallow woman before her. She is in almost exactly the same position as before, her breath coming in shallow pants but a small, heavy smile on her face.   
  
“Hey, you,” Emma breathes. “They’re gone,” she says unnecessarily. The fact that Regina was still here, unmolested, said as much.

 

“Thank,” Regina pushes out. She stops for a second, seemingly gathering all her strength before saying, “You,” punctuating the word with the biggest smile she can muster.

 

It sends Emma’s heart flying in thirty different directions, and it’s with great fortitude that Emma manages to not start crying annoying happy tears and begins to focus on cleaning and dressing the worst of Regina’s wounds.

 

Henry returns with a blanket, and once Regina’s more superficial cuts had been cleaned up and the bathtub scrubbed of the worst of the blood, Emma manages to get a pillow behind Regina’s head, underneath the woman’s right leg and under each of her arms. She throws the soft blanket over her and smiles at the soft sigh of her son’s mother, undoubtedly going through shock with the sheer amount of blood loss she had experienced.

 

“You lied,” Henry says, breaking the easy silence in the bathroom. His eyebrows crinkle in thought. “To save her.” It’s as if the young boy is undergoing a revelation, realizing that the world didn’t merely exist in black and white. Maybe he was.

 

“Sometimes lying can be good, Henry,” Emma says, knowing this was a good ‘teaching moment’ or whatever they say in all those parenting books she never got around to reading.

 

“Like…when my mom tried to convince me the curse wasn’t real?” Henry asks, his forehead still scrunched in thought but his eyes never leaving his battered mother.

 

“Sort of. She thought she was doing the best thing, Henry.”

 

Henry just nods, his lips pursed and his eyes drifting as he digested this information.

“You and my mom,” he says after awhile. “You broke the curse.”

 

 _Shit_. “Um, maybe, but—”

 

“That means it’s True Love! That means we’re gonna be a family now, right, Emma?” Henry asks her, and his large brown eyes are so hopeful that she doesn’t want to add the dark ‘If she even lasts the night’ that immediately puts a damper on the hope flailing around in her own chest. From the sheer amount of blood loss the woman sustained, there would be no telling if she would survive without a blood transfusion or proper medical care. And she knows, just _knows_ , that the only two people in the entire town who would help Regina were right in the room with her.

 

Regina had been trying so hard to redeem herself, to mend all the bridges she had burned and to start moving past her grudges and her inherent need for control. And she was _succeeding_.

 

In one moment. One stupid, idiotic moment, Emma had taken that all away from her by violating her in a way that Regina had previously forbidden. The thought makes Emma stiffen. Had Regina known all along that kissing Emma would break the curse?

 

That night, Emma and Henry decided a camp-out on the bathroom floor was in order. They piled as many blankets and pillows into the bathroom as was feasible, and Emma had managed to grill up a couple of grilled cheeses and make some hot chocolate from these weird chocolate squares that Henry instructed her how to prepare. Emma had made Regina a grilled cheese, too, but it still sat, torn to pieces but uneaten, on the edge of the bathtub, a stark reminder of the fact that Regina was far too weak to even eat. Emma did manage to get Regina to sip some of the Pedialyte, though, in the few short moments she was awake. To watch over Regina, Emma placed the little glass horse on the edge of the tub, telling it to take care of her while she recovered.

 

The succeeding days were trying on the three of them. Regina seemed to be getting no better, but also was getting no worse. Emma periodically had to leave Regina and Henry to attend town meetings as the town tried to regroup after the initial shock of the broken curse wore off. Mary Margaret—

_No, Snow fucking White_

—had assumed de facto control of the town, and had asked Emma to remain as Sheriff. She accepted, mostly to ensure that she could continue seeing after the safety of Regina, whom everyone still presumed was dead.

 

Snow and Charming pleaded with her to move back into the loft, where Charming had now officially taken up residence after initializing the mutual divorce proceedings with his “curse-wife,” Abigail. Emma found that her parents were hopelessly, disgustingly in love with one another, and it simultaneously made Emma want to retch and also made her want _exactly that_ with the mother of her son. But of course, the two of them weren’t exactly the type to do anything that could be accidentally misconstrued as normal. Hell, they couldn’t even have sex normally. It still doesn't mean she couldn’t long for the days when she and Regina were coaching their son’s soccer team and having insane non-intimate sex.

 

Emma declined Snow and Charming’s requests repeatedly, citing that Henry “felt closer” to Regina when he was in his mother’s house.

 

She had to keep herself from snickering as she said it.

 

It was about two weeks in when Emma notices a real change in Regina. Emma had moved Regina to her bed, and the two of them were just sort of…existing together, when Regina croaks out, “You haven’t left me yet.”

 

The statement kind of jars Emma, because in the rare moments Regina was awake and properly conscious, they had avoided talking about Them and had instead focused on the inane or Henry.

 

Emma makes a small noise in her throat. It’s supposed to sound noncommittal, but it more sounds like an awkward grunt.

 

“Why?” Regina asks, mustering all her energy to turn her head to look at her companion. She sees soft wisps of blonde hair falling out of a ponytail and framing Emma’s face. Wide, tired eyes and _years_. So many more years on Emma’s face than had been there a month ago. The realization strikes her hard in the gut, guilt filling the chasm quickly.

 

“You really have to ask that?” Emma asks flatly in response, her heart sinking. She had thought—Emma’s thoughts cut off as she feels a bandaged hand awkwardly fumble into her own.

 

She had thought that if Regina were to make it out of the proverbial woods, if she were to survive, Regina might actually want Emma this time around. That maybe now that all the lies and the barriers were gone, they could finally be together. Obviously, she had been wrong.

 

Emma turns to observe the quiet woman, wondering if she had suddenly drifted back off to sleep. Instead, she finds Regina holding the glass horse carefully, a pair of decidedly lucid brown eyes regarding her.

 

“You have a family,” Regina says bitterly, almost as if to argue why Emma should go. Why Emma should leave her. Her fingers run delicately over the small ears of the horse and around its toothpick-thin legs. “You have a life outside of doing this. Here. With me,” she says, placing the figurine on the table just a little too harshly. There is the sound tinkling sound of snapping glass, and the soft sound of Regina releasing a pained cry.

 

The next thing she knows, Regina is depositing the glass horse into her hands, the front two spindly legs from the figurine missing. “See?” Regina says in reference to the horse. “I am a destroyer. I break everything precious to me, Emma, and I will break you, too.” Regina deposits the two broken legs into Emma’s cupped palm as well. “This can’t…this will _never_ work.”

 

And Emma knows she has to try. She has to try for what she wants with Regina because she didn’t try hard enough before. “Y’know, the good thing about being as clumsy as I am,” Emma says, “Is that I’m really good at fixing things.” She pauses to place the glass pieces on her nightstand. “I know you’ve seen me wow the ladies with my Glock 22 skills, but you should _definitely_ see me with a glue gun,” Emma responds with a small smile, looking from Regina’s eyes to their almost joined hands and back up to Regina’s eyes again. “I promise you, Regina. Here, with you and the kid? There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” Her fingers reverently graze the backs of Regina’s own, and suddenly, Emma’s body feels strange, like it’s filled with seawater that is crashing and roiling in a fierce tempest. It feels warm and smooth, and the feeling feels like it’s flowing outward, all moving toward a single point—

 

All moving toward Regina.

 

Regina gasps as the sudden golden-white light enveloping Emma’s hands pours over her own hand, the feeling traveling up her arm and suffusing through her entire being, invigorating her. Emma marvels at it, unwilling to take her hand away until she sees a deep purple begin swirling in Regina’s eyes, the shock of which has Emma ripping her hand away and scrambling across the large bed.

 

“What the—” Emma stutters, her breath coming in wild pants and her body feeling simultaneously like it had just run a 10k and had just experienced the best orgasm of its life.

 

“You have magic,” Regina breathes, her voice low and raspy, like she, too had just had the best orgasm of her life.

 

“M-m-agic?”

 

“You just performed healing magic, Emma,” Regina clarifies, a slow, seductive grin spreading over her features. It’s the most _Regina_ Emma has seen the woman look since Emma had tried cooking her breakfast that morning so many weeks ago. The smile stays on Regina’s face as Regina begins unwrapping the dressings on her right wrist despite Emma’s many complaints.

 

Much to Emma’s surprise, the deep cut is now merely a long purple line that would undoubtedly rise with time. Regina runs the fingers of her left hand over the scar wonderingly, her lips parted and the color back in her cheeks.

 

Emma wants to kiss her. She wants to latch onto the woman and never let go, stamp a red stamp that says, “Property of Emma Swan” all over her skin and declare her love for the woman in every known language. She wants to cry and laugh in relief, her heart feeling like it’s a river finally crashing through a dam.

 

Instead she sort of chokes out a noise that’s somewhere between a cough and a snort, and she has to look away to hide the moisture forming in her eyes.

 

Regina was gonna be okay.

 

Emma is forced to turn back when Regina’s hand finds Emma’ jaw and lightly pulls Emma toward her. Regina doesn’t say anything, she only looks into Emma’s eyes, a thousand and one emotions flicking across her deep brown orbs, before folding herself into Emma, clutching her shirt and wrapping an arm around her torso in an embrace that makes everything just click into place.

 

Emma still isn’t sure if it was magic or if it was just a figment of her imagination, but she saw her future then. It was her and Regina and Henry in a million little moments: at the park trying to fly a kite on a windy day; at the beach on the Fourth of July playing with sparklers that cut through the night sky; at the foot of the porch steps with an almost-grown Henry, standing awkwardly but happily in his first suit with his first girlfriend at his first prom; at Granny’s diner, where Emma places a soft, discreet kiss just under Regina’s ear while Henry scarfs down a large stack of pancakes and her parents sit stiffly but happily enough across from them.

 

“I love you,” Emma whispers, and she feels Regina tighten her grip on Emma in response.

 

“I don’t deserve you,” Regina responds quietly, her body curving in on itself like window blinds slowly rolling closed by fingers on a wand.

 

Emma lifts Regina’s face to hers and begins planting small, light kisses over every reachable point on the woman’s face. “And here I was thinking that I don’t deserve you,” she says in between kisses. She feels Regina shakily exhale, the warm breath fanning out against Emma’s face. It was a wonderful feeling, being so close to Regina again.

 

“I’m not supposed to be happy,” Regina says resignedly, as if she had already figured everything out, as if the statement precluded their relationship, as if it were fact. “I was never meant to be happy.” And suddenly Emma knows just exactly why she had found Regina in the bathtub like she had. It makes Emma’s heart constrict in a paroxysm of agony for the woman in her arms. Regina had seen happiness crumble in her grasp at every turn; at this point, she was simply precipitating the inevitable dénouement and sparing Emma and Henry the effort of attempting to love the unlovable.

 

“So let’s be not-happy together,” Emma says simply, her nose bumping against Regina’s and causing the woman to look back up into Emma’s eyes. Emma smiles a half-smile and bumps Regina’s nose again before moving forward to catch Regina’s lips with her own.

 

There is no strange wind or golden light this time, but the strange stirring inside them is the same. Emma is tumbling and falling into Regina, the woman’s rough lips an unearthly, heavenly, reality. She feels Regina’s hand fist in her hair at the base of her neck, the woman letting out a long shaky breath before returning to her previous position curled in Emma’s arms. Emma can feel the hot, sticky tears on her neck, and she gently strokes Regina’s hair and her back, the woman’s soft shuddering breaths slowly evening out.

 

“I like one egg in the morning and a slice of rye toast.”

  
The words are strange, and Emma is suddenly reminded of cake. The look Emma gives Regina must scream ‘confusion,’ because Regina responds with a wry, albeit slightly shaky, smile. “My breakfast, dear. If you’re going to be cooking it, you might as well know how I like it.”

 

The winds of change are tugging at the fabric of their existences, but Emma’s smile is like the sun, and Regina’s answering one a soft sliver of moon.


End file.
